Requirement
by GinnyRules
Summary: Hermione glared at him in annoyance, ready with her retort, and then- "You can't apparate anywhere on Hogwarts grounds, you dolt," Malfoy snapped at Smith. / Professor Peverell, Professor Black, Professor Gaunt... all have participated in a dark plot haunting the Hogwarts Halls. Hermione's return, and Malfoy's presence, may be all that stands to prevent a catastrophe.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything. Not a thing.

As of January 2013 I am editing small details of this story so that it is more to my satisfaction. The plot will not be affected much, but I may post an epilogue and some additional drabbles, as well as edit the final chapters in such a manner that the rating will be altered.

**A/N:** I am bedridden and loopy from codeine after having just had my wisdom teeth removed, and so this is the result. I've never attempted Dramione before- never been a fan of the pairing, whether canon compliant or not, nor of the heaps of cliches that come along with them. But after reading the outstanding "Different Names For The Same Place" by namelessamelie I started to wonder if it might be a fun challenge to try to write this. I've made an extensive list of cliches I am not allowed to include (including but not limited to: Draco and Hermione as Head Boy and girl living in closed quarters, marriage law, veelas, uncalled for drunkenness, any of the nicknames 'Mione, Ferret, Slytherin Price, or Weaselette), and now it's time to see if I can pull it off.**  
**

**CHAPTER ONE – PROFESSOR PEVERELL**

Hermione Granger was awoken on the morning of her nineteenth birthday by a silvery white Jack Russell Terrier licking her forehead. Rubbing her eyes blearily, she sat up in shock when she saw its swirling eyes and recoiled. It was not until the fog of sleep had lifted from her mind that she realized it was a Patronus.

"Hello there," she whispered, offering the creature her hand. Though she had seen it but seldom, she recognized it at once as Ron's. The friendly dog sat back and spoke in Ron's voice.

"Go to the library," it said before licking her hand affectionately once more and bounding away through a wall.

_Go to the library?_ To Hermione's immense annoyance she had found the library closed for renovations the previous day, and she did not entirely fancy a stroll through the castle at the break of dawn simply to be turned away at the door. But her curiosity was piqued, and after a moment's consideration she dressed in silence so as not to wake the three other girls still sound asleep in the dormitory. She passed Emilia Cadwallader and Katrice Burbage on tiptoe, wrinkling her nose a little at the sight of the gleaming Head Girl's badge on Burbage's bedside table, and stopped in front of Ginny's bed.

"Ginny," she breathed. "Can I borrow the Marauder's Map?"

Ginny muttered something unintelligible and placed a pillow over her head.

"Ginny!"

"All right, all right," Ginny grumbled, reaching under her mattress and extracting the familiar piece of yellowed parchment without lifting her head. "If I give it to you now will you let me sleep the rest of the year?"

"Not a chance," Hermione replied, grinning and taking the map.

As it was early morning and she was not really out of bounds, Hermione did not bother to disillusion herself as she left Gryffindor tower and headed for the library. She did, however, employ the map to navigate a Peeves-free route, noting that a large number of ghosts appeared to be congregating on the third floor. Once she had made it to the library Hermione saw to her relief that its doors were open once more, though not a living soul appeared to be up and about within. She strode past the section of basic textbooks reserved for first and second years, and then, she saw it.

"Oh, Ron!" she exclaimed, awestruck.

An entire new wing had been added to the library. An entire hallway lined with bookshelves, packed from floor to ceiling with new, unexplored volumes. Hermione did not think she had ever come so close to swooning in her life. Mastering herself, she walked to a small table surrounded by plush purple armchairs, where a familiar grey screech owl was waiting for her.

"Hello Moony," she greeted Harry's new owl, stroking its feathers briefly and taking the two letters attached to its leg. She opened the one bearing Ron's untidy scrawl first, her heart beating a little faster, her cheeks flushed.

_Hermione,_

_Happy birthday! I was looking through the Ministry Archives when I popped in on Harry the other day and I noticed an entire section on Hogwarts. It took some convincing—Harry had to sit through an entire lunch with that old codger Callaghan—but we managed to talk them into donating all these books to Hogwarts in support of the reconstruction effort. I hope you like them. Especially the ones in the far left corner._

_It's only been a week since we last saw each other but I'm completely useless without you, of course. Speaking of which, sorry about the mustard stain in the corner. Long story short, George is a prat._

_Let me know when your first Hogsmead weekend is announced so we can meet up. Unless of course you've decided to abandon this whole Hogwarts business at last, in which case let me know when to pick you up._

_Best,_

_Ron._

_PS: I was only joking about leaving Hogwarts. Don't be angry with me._

Hermioned laughed at this last, remembering the incredulous looks on the boys' faces when she had announced her intention to return to Hogwarts to complete her education. In the end neither of them had been able to say that they were quite so shocked by her decision. In fact, Ron had surprised her afterwards by pulling her aside and suggesting that he put his aspirations to join the Auror Office on hold.

"George has asked me if I'd like to manage the Hogsmead branch of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes," he had said. "Just for the first few months, you know. I can always join the Auror Office later on. This way we could see each other every time you have a weekend off."

Sitting in front of a roaring fire at Grimmauld Place, she had felt a curious warmth spread from her fingers to her toes at his words. They had been staying in London with Harry, both because they did not want to impose upon Mr and Mrs Weasley at the Burrow as they mourned their son, and because Hermione could not imagine trying to share a bedroom with Ron if she were to visit him at home right under his mother's nose. Things had gotten a little uncomfortable when it had become clear that Harry also intended for himself and Ginny to share a room at Grimmauld Place, but in the end the house was large enough to afford privacy for all, and Ron had raised only a token protest.

"You don't have to put off your plans for me," she had told Ron.

Taking her hand, he had replied, "I want to."

Hermione smiled, too, at the subtle way which Ron had found to signal that George's spirits might finally be returning. But above all she was incredibly touched by Ron and Harry's gesture. Already she was itching to pick out one of the new books and settle down into an armchair with it. Instead she opened Harry's letter and began to read.

_Hermione,_

_Happy Birthday! I expect Ron's explained to you about the books. I don't think the Ministry was too keen on parting with them, but we got there in the end. It was all Ron's idea, and he was very excited for you to see them. Be sure to take a look at the ones he set aside in the far left, by Lady Cedrella of Derbyshire._

_I'm sorry to have to include this in your birthday wishes, Hermione, but I'm also writing you with a warning, something I overheard at the office earlier. You'll remember when we testified against Lucius Malfoy, how we decided to give testimony to help exonerate Draco. Well, the Malfoy trials are over now and as you'll see in the _Prophet_, Lucius was freed. Don't believe what you read though, it had nothing to do with contributions to the wizarding community. He named names, plain and simple. But what I really want to warn you about is Draco: they're letting him return to Hogwarts. He was being held in Azkaban pending a final decision and they released him today. I hear McGonagall wasn't convinced about letting him back in at first, but apparently Dubmledore's portrait talked her into it. I expect Draco will arrive there at any time. I haven't told Ron yet because he'll go mental when he hears, but I'll have to eventually, so you can expect a letter from him about it. Be sure to let us know if Draco gives you a hard time, because he's on strict probation and one word from you will have him chucked out. They're even forcing him to take Muggle Studies, if you'll believe it._

_Anyhow, sorry to burden you with all that, but I thought you should know. I'll try to make a trip to Hogsmead for your next visit, but don't worry, I'll give you and Ron plenty of time to spend alone._

_Love,_

_Harry._

_PS: I was only joking about you and Ron. Please don't be angry with me._

Hermione folded up the letters and placed them in her pocket, comparing the sentiments accompanying each boy's signature with a slight frown. Harry's was signed with love in the same way he might have addressed a letter to Mrs. Weasley. Ron's, on the other hand, was signed _Best._ She had to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the thought that his old insecurities might remain even after everything they had been through in the war. As for the arrival of Draco Malfoy, Hermione had anticipated it, though it was still less than desirable news. What with the extended curfews and Hogsmead privileges afforded older students returning after the war to take their NEWT's, however, she did not think that she would have much difficulty avoiding him outside of classes.

Squashing her ungenerous thoughts, Hermione beamed up at the bookshelves laid out before her and made for the corner both Harry and Ron had mentioned. There, to her everlasting delight, she found a highly detailed, first edition of _Hogwarts, A History_, written in three volumes with full historical appendices.

All other concerns banished from her mind, Hermione settled down with the first volume and scanned the table of contents. She saw with a thrill that an entire chapter had been dedicated to house elves. With a contented sigh at the thought that she still had four hours until her first class, she opened the book to _Chapter One: Legends in the Hogwarts Halls._

* * *

_Professor Ignotus Peverell heard a knock at his office door and looked up to see Elderic Gryffindor, one of his youngest and brightest students, standing in the doorway and clutching something tightly in his hand._

"_Come in," Ignotus invited, gesturing to the chair across his desk. The boy took a seat and began at once to fidget, apparently unable to stay still. "What can I do for you?"_

"_It's just this toy mouth organ my brother gave me, sir," Elderic confessed, opening his hand to reveal the tiny silver instrument within, which immediately began to spew a high-pitched, dissonant tune. "He was angry with me for breaking his model ship, so he charmed the mouth organ never to stop playing. It won't stop following me around, either. I haven't slept in three days. And I've tried everything I know, but I can't get it to stop."_

_Ignotus took the offending mouth organ and examined it from every angle, nodding pensively._

"_Yes," he said at last, "this toy bears the mark of powerful magic. Luckily, I know how you can be rid of it permanently."_

"_Really?" Elderic looked almost desperately thankful; there were dark circles under his eyes. _

_Chuckling, Ignotus reached under his desk and produced a small steel box. He then placed the mouth organ in the box, pointed his wand at it, and muttered "Incendio horribilis." Elderic made to lean in and observe the effects of the spell, but before he could do so Ignotus had snapped the top of the box shut and closed the latch._

"_My brother Cadmus invented this spell before he was killed," Ignotus informed his curious student. "Fiendfyre is one of the most powerful substances known to wizardkind, and you are never to attempt summoning it on your own. Left unchecked, it could consume this entire castle in less than an hour. Unlike regular fire, which thrives on oxygen, Fiendfyre feeds on magical power. Once the curse placed upon your mouth organ is consumed—and the toy along with it, I'm afraid—it will move to devour the next source of magic it can find. However I, knowing the counter-curse, have enchanted this box to contain the Fiendfyre within it. With nothing to feed upon, it will burn itself out."_

_Even as Ignotus spoke a deep orange glow emanated from the box and Elderic could hear the crackling within. As the effects of the Fiendfyre died out, Ignotus opened the box to reveal a charred wreckage of twisted metal which, to Elderic's obvious delight, remained quite silent._

"_Thank you, sir!" the boy exclaimed, rising to leave. He turned, however, before he could exit the room, and added, "I'm sorry about your brother, sir. The one who died."_

_Ignotus inclined his head. "Both of my brothers have passed through the veil. And I thank you, Elderic, for saying so. I am sorry as well."_

* * *

Draco Malfoy burst through the grate in the Slytherin common room while the premises were still empty, coughing out a little soot and setting his trunk down by a leather sofa. With his name having been in and out of the _Daily Prophet_ all summer long he found the prospect of remaining in the common room as his fellow Slytherins appeared en masse a daunting one. So, instead of lingering he withdrew his Hand of Glory from an inner pocket and headed for the library, where he knew no Slytherins would appear on a Friday morning.

His mistake, of course, was a lack of foresight when it came to students from other houses who might be found this early in the library. No sooner had he passed Madame Pince's desk did he spot Granger sitting in what looked like a new history wing, her expression serious and unguarded as she leafed through an enormous dusty tome. It was almost as though nothing since their early schooldays had changed, what with Granger's nose being perpetually stuck between the pages of a book, and her presence irking him everywhere he went.

Yet he could not lie to himself: everything had changed. He had dreaded returning to school ever since his father had put forward the idea in his typical demanding fashion, appealing to the family's need to rehabilitate its image. Draco might have refused if not for the fact that deep down, he had no desire to spend another year in the house where he had seen so many people tortured at the hands of the Dark Lord.

His own mother and father. Charity Burbage and Ollivander. Dolohov, Rowle, Wormtail. Ted Tonks and Xenophilius Lovegood. The Lovegood girl, the goblin.

Granger, too, for that matter.

(_"You are lying, filthy mudblood, and I know it! You have been inside my vault at Gringotts! Tell the truth, _tell the truth_!"_)

His mother had assured him that he was making the right decision, that completing his education was an important step. Now that he was here, he felt greater dread at the prospect of walking these halls again than of remaining at Malfoy Manor. What had been the purpose of everything his father had put him through under the assurance that they would emerge from the war victorious? Draco could not help but feel as though he had been rudely cheated of the world he was promised, and that it had all been his father's doing.

The fog of dread born out of his time in Azkaban was beginning to descend, and for a time Draco was lost to the world. He did not notice Granger's eyes drift in his direction, wary of his movements, though in any case she could not have identified him in the early morning gloom. But when he came back to himself and looked in her direction once more, she was gone.

* * *

The first class of the day for returning NEWT students was Charms, which had been passed along from Filius Flitwick to Bill Weasley when the former entered into a long-deserved retirement. Hermione had been pleased to discover that Bill was an excellent teacher, though it felt a little odd to call him Professor Weasley after having danced at his wedding. She arrived ten minutes early with her new book tucked under her arm, eager to sort through her notes on magical methods of conveyance before the lesson could begin. Only a handful of chairs filled the spacious room due to the small number of older students in the school, whom the staff had been unwilling to place with regular seventh years.

At the front of the room sat Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil, the only Ravenclaws in their year who had opted to continue attending school rather than taking on Ministry jobs. Behind them the three remaining Hufflepuffs were grouped together, with Ernie Macmillan chatting to a bored looking Hannah Abbot about the various advantages of the Cleansweep over the Comet broomstick. Zacharias Smith observed them with his arms crossed. Neville, for his part, arrived at the same time as Hermione, leaving Slytherin as the only house which was not represented. With Crabbe and Nott dead, the Greengrass family having moved to France, Malfoy imprisoned, and Zabini and Goyle apparently unwilling to show their faces, Pansy Parkinson had been the only Slytherin who had attempted to return to school.

She had not lasted two weeks. Faced with constant taunts and curses, the brunt of which came from Ginny and her friends, Pansy had left school in the dead of night, never to return. Hermione had considered speaking to Ginny about her behavior, but every time she had been about to do so Fred's face had popped into her head, and she had thought better of it.

"Morning Class," Bill called out, entering the classroom with a briefcase in hand. Hermione and Neville waved at him happily, though Neville's smile faltered when he saw the extensive question sheet Bill was passing out.

"Everyone here?" Bill asked. "Excellent. So we're going to continue on with safe magical travel practices today. If—Oh good morning, Malfoy."

There was a collective gasp from the students who turned as one to face the back of the room, where Draco Malfoy was leaning against the doorway, somehow looking uncomfortable and haughty and apprehensive all at once. Apart from a slightly raised eyebrow, Bill gave no indication that Malfoy's presence was an abnormality, gesturing at him to take a seat. Hermione saw Zacharias Smith snicker and whisper something in Ernie Macmillan's ear, smirking in Malfoy's direction all the while. For his part, Malfoy was acting as though the other students did not even exist. Neville caught Hermione's eye and tilted his head, as if to ask whether she had been aware of this new development. Hermione nodded discreetly before returning her attention to Bill, who had finished handing out his Apparition questionnaires.

"As I was saying," Bill continued, "moving on from Wednesday's lesson on the Floo network, we will now be reviewing ideally combined Floo and Apparition transport. Who among you can tell me what would be the fastest way to travel from Hogwarts to Hogsmead village, and subsequently to East Dufftown?

Before Hermione could raise her hand, Zacharias Smith had let out a derisive chuckle and said, "By Apparition, as it's less than thirty miles away. I would have thought that would be more in the realm of OWL's rather than NEWT's."

Hermione threw him an aggravated glance, ready with her retort, and then—

"You can't Apparate anywhere on Hogwarts grounds, you dolt," Malfoy snapped at Smith.

A surprised chuckle bubbled to Hermione's lips and she struggled to remain quiet, wondering all the while at Ron's expression if he could hear Malfoy echoing her frequent refrain.

"Correct," Bill agreed, frowning a little at Malfoy's insulting Smith. "The Hogwarts grounds are protected from Apparition by ancient magic, making Floo powder a more practical method..."

The remainder of the lesson passed uneventfully, though Hermione found her mind wandering to Malfoy several times, puzzling at his subdued behavior. He did not speak again after his initial outburst, sitting hollow-eyed and sallow-skinned at the back of the room. Hermione knew that in the wake of such overwhelming numbers of dangerous criminals as were currently being rounded up, Kingsley Shacklebolt had been unable as yet to pass a bill disbanding the Dementors as Azkaban's guards. Apparently his time in prison had affected Malfoy rather strongly.

Their next class was Muggle Studies, which Hermione had rejoined with special permission from McGonagall after learning the identity of the new Professor. Rolf Scammander was an odd, energetic sort of man with a weather-worn face which, combined with his eyepatch and dragonskin boots, gave him a rather piratical appearance. Hermione had hung back after their first lesson to speak with him privately.

"I wanted to thank you for acknowledging Professor Burbage, sir," Hermione had said. "She was a wonderful teacher."

"You studied under Mrs Burbage?" Scammander had asked.

"Only in third year, sir."

He had looked at her with some amusement. "Your chocolate frog card lists you as muggleborn. Yet you've taken on Muggle Studies."

Hermione had not been certain whether he was asking a question or not, so she had shrugged and said, "Well, thank you for a great lesson. I've read your books, and I'll be glad for the opportunity to learn from you firsthand."

"You mean my grandfather's books, I think," Scammander had replied a little cynically, and she had known without having to ask that he was referring to his great-grandfather Newt Scammander, author of the seminal _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them._

"No sir, your books," Hermione had insisted. "I especially enjoyed the way you outlined a clear case for werewolf rights in _Beast, Spirit, Being: The Case For Empathy._ I didn't know that you were interested in Muggle culture as well."

"Oho!" Scammnder had exclaimed, suddenly much more jovial. "I can see that the reports are true, Miss Granger. Ravenclaw house lost out on a force to be reckoned with the day you were sorted into Gryffindor. Well, well, I shall look forward to our next lesson."

From this point on, to Hermione's embarrassment, Professor Scammander had called upon her in class disproportionately often in comparison with the other students, sometimes going so far as to hold entire conversations with her on subjects too advanced for the other pupils while the class simply looked on, waiting to carry on with their lesson.

Presently, the subject of discussion was the effect of the International Statute of Secrecy upon wizard-Muggle relations, a topic which seemed to arouse interest in exactly no one apart from Hermione. Determined for once not to be the only student who spoke for the duration of the class, she kept her hands clasped firmly in her lap for the first five minutes, an exercise which proved almost physically painful.

"Now, now," Professor Scammander was saying, "surely _someone_ can tell me about Muggle dependence upon magical neighbors prior to 1692. I see we have a new addition to our class today. What say you, Mr—"

"Malfoy, sir," said Malfoy in a voice that was barely above a whisper. Hermione found herself wondering whether the Dementors had actually robbed him of his will to express his superiority in public.

"Yes, an old name, Malfoy," Professor Scammander went on. "Surely your family must have had ties to the Muggle community prior to the introduction of the Statute. What if anything can you tell us about that?"

Hermione saw Malfoy's knuckles grow white as he clenched the sides of his desk in anger at the insinuation that his family had once associated with Muggles. There was no doubt that he felt participation in the class was beneath him.

"Actually _sir_," Malfoy replied slowly, as though he were choosing his words with great care, "the Malfoy family tree consists of wizards in its entirety. I can't speak much beyond that fact."

Hermione's blood boiled at his attitude, and, throwing her resolution to stay silent out the window, she raised her hand.

"Ah, but of course Miss Granger can enlighten us!" Professor Scammander declared with a grin.

"Well, sir, as concerns the Malfoys, the family's earliest known ancestor Armand Malfoy traveled to Britain with William the Conqueror and continued to provide magical services to King William thereafter. In return the King annexed a number of Muggle land holdings which were given to the Malfoys. The majority of these are still intact in Wiltshire, I think. A male heir of the Malfoy line was also a known suitor of Queen Elizabeth the First. There is hardly a single wizarding family today that doesn't have strong ties within the Muggle community, both predating the Statute and after it."

"That is precisely so, Miss Granger, ten points to Gryffindor," Professor Scammander agreed enthusiastically, going on to quiz her at great length about her knowledge of the Malfoys' dealings with Muggle Renaissance art dealers. Hermione could feel Malfoy's eyes burning holes in the back of her neck all the while, but she refused to turn around and acknowledge him, and so did not see the fierce war between anger and something more like incredulity being waged behind his eyes.

It was not until class was dismissed that Hermione allowed herself to observe Malfoy again, which happened to coincide with the moment he ran into Luna Lovegood in the middle of the corridor. Hermione, who knew that Luna had no classes anywhere in this part of the castle, could only assume that Luna was undertaking one of her frequent ventures into idle daydreaming, and could not resist watching to see what unfolded.

"Draco Malfoy," Luna said, gazing at him with wide eyes. "You're back at Hogwarts now."

Malfoy gave a stiff, infinitesimal nod and attempted to leave, but Luna was not ready to release him just yet.

"Your father wasn't very nice to me when he imprisoned me in your cellar, you know," she pointed out, which was unusually blunt even for Luna. Malfoy's nostrils flared, and Hermione poised herself to interfere. "But you always brought me food when the others weren't paying attention."

Hermione's mouth fell open in surprise just as Malfoy's eyes flickered over to her. The look on her face appeared to be the last straw, because he ceased even attempting to feign politeness and sidestepped Luna to flee the corridor. Hermione watched him go, a thousand thoughts crowding their way into her mind.

(_"What else did you take, what else? ANSWER ME! CRUCIO!"_)

A distraction from her dark reflections arrived over lunch in the form of Ginny, who handed Hermione a box wrapped in bright red gift paper.

"Thanks, Ginny!" Hermione exclaimed as she opened the box, which turned out to contain a beautiful new set of self-inking eagle feather quills. She was about to ask if Ginny had heard about Malfoy's return when the latter interrupted her.

"Oh, Hermione, did you hear about the Grey Lady?"

"No, why?" Hermione frowned. "The ghosts were acting a bit odd on the map this morning. What happened?"

"She's vanished," Ginny replied. When Hermione looked sceptical she added, "No really, the Bloody Baron was all up in arms about it. Supposedly she claimed she no longer wanted to exist as a spirit and she knew a way to find the veil, whatever that means. And she tried to lure the Baron into some sort of trap with her, but he wouldn't go. She's _gone_, obliterated. What do you imagine could do that to a ghost?"

"I don't know," said Hermione with serious concern. "There are so few substances that can harm a ghost—Hang on. Did the Baron say where this all happened?"

Ginny shook her head. "He won't talk about it. Peeves has been hounding him all morning and he won't even raise a finger against him. Bit worrying, actually."

A sneaking suspicion was working its way into Hermione's head, and she rose to leave with her roast beef sandwich untouched.

"Listen, I might need to hold onto the Marauder's Map a little longer," she told Ginny, hoisting her bag over her shoulder and all but sprinting out of the Great Hall.

Five minutes later Hermione was entering the Headmistress' office, panting and greeting a surprised Professor McGonagall.

"Sorry to bother you at mealtime, Professor, but I have a rather important question," said Hermione, noticing that while nearly all of the previous Headmasters' and Headmistresses' portraits were either waving or winking at her, Snape's was conspicuously empty.

"No need to apologize," Professor McGonagall waved her off. "Tell me what this is about."

"I was wondering if the Room of Requirement was ever assessed for reparations during the rebuilding of the castle this summer."

Professor McGonagall looked taken aback. "I'm afraid this is the first I am hearing of that room's continued existence. You are referring to the room which was used by Dumbledore's army to transport members of the Order into the castle last May, am I correct?"

Hermione nodded.

"In that case, Miss Granger, I must tell you that it did not figure into any of the staff's searches of the premises. The room was believed to have been damaged beyond repair."

"I see." Hermione's brow furrowed as she went over the possibilities. She knew for a fact that Ginny had used the Room of Requirement's passageway to Hogsmead to sneak out after hours on at least one occasion. And Ginny had reported the room as seeming roughed up but generally in working order.

"Is there anything you wish to report?" Professor McGonagall asked shrewdly.

"I just have a hunch at the moment," Hermione replied. "If I find any solid facts I'll come straight to you." She turned to leave. As she was about to step onto the revolving spiral staircase that would take her back down to the main corridor, Professor McGonagall cleared her throat, stopping Hermione in her tracks.

"You should know, Miss Granger," she said, "that it is a steadfast rule at Hogwarts that the Head Boy and Girl be chosen from among seventh year students. Had circumstances allowed your career at this school to carry out normally—Well, sufficed to say that from your very first term here at Hogwarts, it had always been my intention that you should become Head Girl."

Hermione could feel her cheeks blushing crimson, and she beamed at McGonagall as she left the office, absorbed all the way down by much happier thoughts than she had been having all day. It was for this reason, perhaps, that she failed to notice the strange shimmer surrounding the door at the end of the corridor which she believe would lead her back into the entrance hall. Once she had stepped through it she found herself, curiously enough, in a small broom cupboard filled with lemon scented cleaning products.

Shaking her head in disbelief, Hermione pushed open the cupboard door to leave and found herself standing, to her horror, on a window ledge in the owlery.

"Merlin's pants!" she shrieked, suddenly struck with vertigo. Though her instincts were good, her hands were unable to find purchase on the window frame fast enough to prevent her from overbalancing. She was tumbling backwards, desperately reaching for her wand as the world moved in slow motion and her feet slid into open air. But her wand was in her bag, which was swinging precariously over her shoulder, slipping, slipping...

A hand grasped Hermione's arm tightly and pulled her up through the window. It happened in a heartbeat, so that by the time she landed on her knees on the Owlery floor she was completely disoriented.

"Not the best way to send an owl," a cold voice drawled above her, and Hermione froze.

Malfoy. She forced herself to look up and sure enough there he was, towering above her and wearing a look of mild disgust so customary that she felt certain his face must simply be frozen that was permanently by this point. But he had saved her.

"Funny, I always thought that was how it was done," Hermione shot back sarcastically, standing up and glowering at him. It was then that she realized she was still holding onto his arm—his left arm. She let go of it at once as though she had been burned, and Malfoy's expression wavered briefly from annoyance to frustration, though the change was gone so quickly that she could not be sure it had really taken place. For a moment Hermione almost felt guilty: it was not as though the dark mark on his arm was not an ugly symbol, representative of every twisted ideal she hated most in the world; yet she could not bring herself entirely to blame him for having been branded at the age of sixteen as a result of the ideals of a horrifically misguided family. Though Ron had disagreed, and refused to participate, this was the reason she and Harry had testified on Malfoy's behalf.

(_"Look, Draco, isn't it the Granger girl?"_

"_I... maybe..."_)

"Thank you," Hermione said. Though the words tasted strange when spoken to him, she meant them.

He nodded awkwardly before turning his back on her and busying himself with attaching a letter to a large tawny owl's talon, not bothering to ask what she had been doing on the window ledge to begin with. Hermione puzzled at the incident which had just taken place. It could very easily have been a fatal one, had Malfoy not happened to be present. She could no longer count on both hands her brushes with death, however the prospect of danger lurking so secretively in the very walls of Hogwarts was frightening in an altogether different way. Unless she was mistaken, something had gone very much awry with the Room of Requirement.

"That was really something," Hermione said aloud to herself, thinking of the way she had been transported seamlessly from the entrance hall to the owlery.

Mistaking her meaning, Malfoy turned to face her, flushed and angry.

"That was _nothing_, Granger," he growled. "Don't make the mistake of thinking it was. You and your perfect Potter and your precious Weasley saved my skin once, and now we're square. That's _all_."

Hermione experienced a momentary stab of pity as she took in his distress. So no one had told him, she mused, that he owed his release from Azkaban to her and to Harry. Given his obvious aversion to being in her debt, she decided at once not to enlighten him. She merely nodded and left him alone with the owls. She was very careful to double check each door she walked through on her way back.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I'll be trying for regular updates on this story, but I may be alternating between this and my Dudley-centric one (yeah, that's not a typo, I'm a bit of a nutter) so we'll see how it goes. I know the "Dramione" progress in the last chapter was slow, but... that's because I meant for it to be, so... deal with it. Haha kidding, it'll get more interesting I swear.  
**

**CHAPTER TWO – ALL HALLOW'S EVE**

Potions with Malfoy later that afternoon was a tense affair. Professor Slughorn had set them the particularly difficult task of brewing Skele-Gro. Hermione busied herself with working from the notes she had made over the summer after finding Snape's copy of _Advanced Potion Making_ in a pile of Harry's old things at the Burrow. She had already added in phoenix tears, and was rummaging through the store cupboard for Ashwinder scales when Zacharias Smith nudged her shoulder and leaned down to speak in her ear.

"Listen, Hermione, you'll want to clear out your things in a minute," Smith said. "You're sitting too close. We've put something in Malfoy's cauldron and you don't want to get hit when it blows up."

"What?" Hermione cried. "Whose we?"

"Anthony and me. He lost his brother because of the Malfoys," Smith began defensively, but Hermione seized him by the collar.

"What did you put in his cauldron?" she hissed.

"Just— just Doxy eggs," Smith stammered.

"And did you forget that chapter seventeen of _Advanced Potion Making_ specifically states that Doxy eggs react badly with Ashwinder scales?" she snapped, already striding past him to the back of the dungeon where Malfoy was about to drop the offending ingredient into his cauldron.

Malfoy had pointedly ignored her and avoided her gaze throughout the lesson, which Hermione had attributed to his likely questioning her sanity after having found her on a window ledge. She had not tried to explain herself, hoping that he would assume the incident had been a prank gone wrong. The result, unfortunately, was that he did not notice her shouting and waving her arms frantically at him until it was too late.

The potion exploded. Hermione had just enough time to cast a shield charm around herself, Malfoy, and Hannah Abbot, who was also nearby, before a tremendous bang resounded through the dungeon and the stone walls around Malfoy's station were coated in a dark, venomous looking sludge. Hermione saw Anthony Goldstein vanish the Doxy eggs sitting at the bottom of Malfoy's cauldron surreptitiously before Slughorn could make his way over in a spluttering attempt to restore order. Ernie rushed over to check that Hannah was all right, leaving Hermione and Malfoy to exchange a dark look. This was rapidly becoming a habit for them, Hermione reflected, and not one she was entirely fond of.

Unable to assess a culprit, Slughorn dismissed the class early after warning them that further disruptions would not be tolerated, and would be met with a week-long detention. Hermione could see Malfoy itching to stalk after Smith, his hand already reaching for his wand, when Slughorn called out, "Granger, Malfoy, will you stay for a moment, please?"

Malfoy looked so disappointed that Hermione wondered why he had not simply ratted out Goldstein and Smith, as had always been his style. Then it occurred to her that it was likely no one would have believed him.

"Yes, sir?" Hermioned asked, approaching Slughorn's desk.

"Miss Granger, some quick thinking on your part there," Slughorn commended her. "I would have expected nothing less from you, of course. Now, I was hoping I could prevail upon you to rejoin the Slug Club this year. I intend to throw together a small dinner party this Halloween. Can I count on you to attend?"

It was as though Malfoy was nonexistent. Slughorn looked right through him, beaming at Hermione. She tried to think of some excuse, but after all she had occasionally found the Slug Club enjoyable, and Ron had already announced that he would be unable to join her for the Halloween feast owing to the need to keep the store open late.

"I'd be delighted, sir," she replied.

"Wonderful, wonderful," Slughorn exclaimed. "Do pass my invitation on to Longbottom if you see him, will you?"

As Hermione turned to leave she heard Slughorn add, "Ah, and Malfoy. You shall need to clean up this mess before you go."

* * *

_Dear Draco,_

_I hope that your first day at Hogwarts has gone well and that you are taking Potions and Transfiguration as your father has instructed. I am writing to inform you that another Ministry raid was performed on the Manor this week and that several Muggle location devices originating from Borgin and Burke's were found in your bedroom. Your father was most disappointed that your carelessness should reflect poorly upon the family, and trusts that you will be more cautious from now on._

_I have included your favourite sugar mice and plum cookies._

_With love,_

_Narcissa_

Draco stared at his mother's letter, delivered by an unknown barn owl over dinner, and felt numb with disbelief. His hands were still sore and covered with grime from the potions explosion in the dungeon, which had stubbornly refused removal from the walls by magical means. He was still seething from the incident, and the letter from home was doing nothing to raise his spirits. He could clearly remember his father _buying_ him a number of the artifacts in his room in third year. He felt as though he were living in a topsy-turvy, nightmare world. Since when had the Ministry cared about Muggles? Mudbloods and half-bloods, certainly. Draco understood very well that the days when blood status counted in wizarding society were over. Yet this was a far cry from everyone losing their minds entirely and bending over backwards to accommodate Muggles. He thought back to Granger's assessment of his family earlier that day, wondering if any of it was true.

He dared not imagine his father's reaction if Lucius were to find out that he had saved Granger's life in the owlery. But that debt had been his own business and no one else's. It was done with, now, and he was not about to go looking out for her again, no matter what mad attention-seeking scheme Granger hatched next.

He looked up and there she was, staring at him from across the Great Hall, surrounded by war heroes and admirers and all sorts of riff-raff. He needed to stop being caught looking at Granger. Crumpling the letter in his fist, he stood and left the Hall without looking back.

* * *

The first Hogsmead weekend of the year took place in the middle of October, and though Harry regretfully declined to attend due to overwork, Ron owled Hermione to schedule a meeting in the Three Broomsticks.

"You look nice," was the first thing he said when Hermione arrived and saw him standing at the bar. Hermioned beamed and kissed him before ordering two butterbeers. When Ron dove into his pocket to pay Madame Rosemerta waved him off.

"Don't be silly, dears, your gold's no good here," she told them fondly. They had encountered this behaviour in nearly every shop they had visited in Diagon Alley over the summer, and while Hermione found it faintly embarrassing, Ron seemed rather pleased with himself.

"Malfoy's not giving you any trouble, is he?" Ron asked the moment they sat down, eyeing her with much concern.

"I can take care of myself, Ron," Hermione reminded him softly. "But as a matter of fact, no. He's been very quiet."

"Because you can tell me, you know—"

"I'm fine, Ron."

"You're sure?"

She silenced him with a kiss, and the morning passed amicably between them as they visited every shop in the village from a new pub called The Pumpkin Seed to Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, which Ron displayed with great pride. Several hours later found them ambling down the main road towards Hogsmead station, unwilling to part, when they ran into Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin on a visit to a local friend.

"He's grown so much already!" Hermione remarked after greeting Andromeda, noticing the increased alertness in Teddy's eyes. She smiled as Ron tickled the young boy, and Andromeda nodded.

"Metamorphmagi grow in leaps and bursts," she explained. "His hair is so long already, almost to his shoulders. Dora was the same way."

"What does it mean?" asked Ron as he continued to make Teddy giggle.

"A side effect of their ability," Andromeda said thoughtfully. "A metamorphmagus' abilities are not biological. They are innately connected to the witch or wizard's magic. A particularly talented wizard who happened to be a metamorphmagus would grow to have a capacity for greater alteration to his appearance. Perhaps Teddy is simply a powerful boy."

"The first known metamorphmagus was a Headmaster of Hogwarts in the Middle Ages," Hermione remembered, withdrawing the first edition _Hogwarts, A History_ from her bag a thumbing through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Ron appeared caught between joy at the success of his gift and a strong desire to roll his eyes.

"Here it is!" said Hermione excitedly, pointing to the twelfth chapter. "Barnabus Selwyn, best known for..." she trailed off, looking up in shock. "He was the creator of the Room of Requirement."

* * *

_Hyperion Malfoy sat in the dimly lit office of Headmaster Barnabus Selwyn, gazing idly at the shapes and shadows cast against the wall by the dying embers in the fireplace._

"_You are certain of this?" Selwyn asked, coming to stand behind Hyperion, his long-fingered hands curling around the back of Hyperion's chair._

"_Yes," Hyperion assured him. "I overheard Professor Elsley speaking to Elizabeth about it. Ignotus Peverell's lost box was found in the Gryffindor common room last night."_

_Selwyn's face shone with triumph in the gloom. "Well, done, Malfoy, well done. Tell me, would you like to become a prefect some day?"_

_Hyperion nodded fervently._

"_Then I shall need one more thing from you," Selwyn said, opening a compartment of his desk and removing a handsomely embroidered cloak of some heavy material. "This is a very rare, very valuable cloak woven from Demiguise hair. It will conceal the wearer's presence from prying eyes. The Gryffindor password is Antipodes. You know what you must do."_

_Hyperion took the cloak and held it with reverence. "And you intend to use Peverell's box to..."_

"_Never mind, Malfoy," Selwyn dismissed him. "Just fetch the box."_

_With the boy gone, Selwyn turned to the portrait of a slumbering Headmaster hung near his desk. Its occupant opened his eyes, no longer feigning sleep, and fixed a keen gaze on Selwyn._

"_You heard?" Selwyn asked._

_The man in the portrait inclined his head and said, "The boy is not to fail. This is an important task."_

"_Malfoy will not fail," Selwyn replied. "The box will be used to locate the Chamber of Secrets, once and for all. And your legacy, Professor Gaunt, along with mine, will be intact."_

"_You realize, of course, that you will be opposed?" said Gaunt. "Your resignation will likely be demanded by the board."_

"_Not to worry," Selwyn said, "no one will know that I partake in these events. I will be well concealed. I have a plan."_

* * *

"Paris?" Hermione repeated. "What do you mean, Paris?"

It was night, and she had long since bade goodbye to Ron and returned to Hogwarts. Shaken by her discoveries of the day, she had entered the common room still muttering to herself and joined Ginny by the fire. Ginny must have misunderstood Hermione's stricken expression, for she had pulled a sympathetic grimace and said, "Ron told you about Paris then, did he?"

"What do you mean, Paris?"

"Oh!" Ginny paled and immediately began to backtrack. "It's nothing. I mean, I just thought for sure that he would have said something today seeing as- It's really none of my business..."

"Ginny," said Hermione in her most Molly-ish voice. "What do you mean, Paris?"

"My brother is such a prat," Ginny complained, throwing her hands up in surrender. "I'm really sorry, Hermione, I shouldn't have said anything. But Ron's been doing so well with the Hogsmead shop that George has asked him to head the new location in Paris until Christmas holiday."

"_And?_" Hermione's voice was rising dangerously in pitch and volume, and Ginny looked a little frightened. "He's not _going_, is he?"

Ginny cringed. "He is. I s'pose he didn't want to ruin your day in Hogsmead. I'm sure he would have told you sooner or later."

"Right," Hermione scoffed, seizing a handful of Floo powder from the fireside and sticking her head into the emerald flames.

The ensuing shouting match between herself and Ron lasted nearly an hour. She had not fought with Ron since the previous year, since he had come back to her and Harry in the Forest of Dean. Foolishly, she had thought that their constant arguments and bickering sessions might finally be behind them. What a load of rubbish, she thought, pulling her head back into Gryffindor Tower and wiping away angry tears. Ginny appeared to have cleared out the common room to give Hermione some space, for which she was grateful. Yet the moment she tried to curl up in an armchair and sleep she found that she might be too restless ever to sleep again. She stayed up most of the night studying _Advanced Potion Making_, trying to come up with some way to circumvent the need for Ashwinder scales, which made the concoction taste so vile. It was a poor distraction.

"Neville," Hermione called over breakfast the next morning, determined not to let Ron reduce her to a sobbing mess in front of the whole school as he had done in sixth year, "I was meant to tell you that Slughorn's having a dinner party on Halloween. I was wondering if you'd accompany me, as a friend, as Ron won't be able to go."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Hermione," Neville muttered, staring resolutely down at his fingernails. "That sounds lovely. But Ginny already told me about the dinner. I'll be going with Hannah."

"That's great, Neville!" Hermione replied, doing her best to hide her disappointment. "No need to apologize. Really, I'm very happy for you. I'll just see you there, then."

Three seats down, Ginny was eyeing Hermione with undue pity, the way one might have looked at Moaning Myrtle during one of her particularly aggravating fits.

"If you're not going back to Hogsmead today you can come down to the Quidditch pitch with us, Hermione," Ginny suggested. "First practice of the season. We've got to get trained up if we're going to properly flatten Slytherin."

For a moment Hermione was transported back to her first year, in the days when Ron had mocked her at every turn and _The Standard Book of Spells: Grade One _had been her only friend. Hogwarts was no longer the same without Harry and Ron.

"Granger."

Hermione looked up and gaped uncomprehendingly at Draco Malfoy, who was actually standing by the Gryffindor table, looking at her.

"Yes?" she asked, keeping the animosity in her voice to a minimum because Ginny was already looking tense.

"Slughorn asked me to give you this," Malfoy said curtly, handing her a small scroll of parchment. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly when he took in the dark circles under her eyes. "Haven't been throwing yourself out more windows, have you, Granger?"

His question blindsided her; it was too much like concern. Wary of the suspicious look on Ginny's face, she shrugged and said, "Why so curious, Malfoy? You wouldn't happen to have set up my little fall in the owlery yourself, would you?"

It was a low blow, given that he was the one who had saved her. But Malfoy only gave her his usual haughty glower.

"Shows what you know," he snapped, and walked away. Everyone at the Gryffindor table began firing questions at Hermione the moment he was gone, but she was hard-pressed to pay attention to them.

She had not interacted much with Malfoy since the incident in their potions class. She had been too preoccupied with reading up on the Room of Requirement to pay him much attention at first. But as the days had worn on and no further incidents like the one on her birthday had occurred, Hermione had begun to notice his eyes one her increasingly often. She had thought, once, of asking him whether her presence was really so offensive that he could not leave her be. But an article vilifying the Malfoy family had appeared in the _Daily Prophet_ that day, and she had not had the heart to do it. In time her conviction that he was looking at her out of some twisted pureblood contempt had dissipated, and she had come to the startling conclusion that out of all the changes at Hogwarts, the only ones that did not bother her were the ones she saw in Malfoy.

(_"I'm going to ask you again. Where did you get this sword? WHERE?"_

"_We found it—We found it—PLEASE!"_)

The night of Slughorn's dinner arrived faster than Hermione had expected, and she found herself, quite suddenly, standing in front of a mirror on Halloween night wishing that she had refused her invitation. Her reconciliatory letter to Ron sat on her pillow, demanding attention. She had not yet been able to bring herself to send it, but knew she would do so soon. However the amount of time she had spent on her appearance seemed a little frivolous by comparison, though she thought humbly that the effect was rather nice. She had managed, after some effort, to subdue her frivolous hair into a tidy knot at the nape of her neck, and she had matched the moss green ribbon that tied it back to the color of her dress. Checking the Marauder's map one last time for congregations of ghosts or any other suspicious activity, she made her way to Slughorn's office.

The expansive room had been filled to the brim with hovering pumpkins and candles which dripped blood-colored wax on the floor. Black and silver hangings covered the walls and tables, which groaned under the weight of sumptuous sweets and confections. The general effect was very impressive, and Hermione's ears were filled with the sounds of raucous laughter and music from the moment she arrived.

"Miss Granger!" exclaimed Professor Scammander, spotting her within an alarmingly short time of her arrival and bowing extravagantly. He was wearing dress robes of outlandish red and purple, and with a flick of his wand conjured a glass of pumpkin juice, which he offered to Hermione. She declined politely and cast around for some excuse to leave, and was lucky enough to see Luna drifting in their direction with a flute of champagne in hand.

"Sir, have you met my friend Luna Lovegood?" Hermione asked, dragging Luna over to effectuate introductions.

"Indeed, I have seen Miss Lovegood's portrait on the third floor corridor canvas depicting members of Dumbledore's Army! Though the likeness certainly does not do her justice," he exclaimed, bending down to kiss Luna's hand.

"You're very handsome," Luna commented. Hermione gaped at her, both stunned and entertained by Luna's frankness. Professor Scammander let out a hearty, unabashed laugh, and Hermione seized the opportunity to slip away. No sooner had she left Luna behind did she run into Ginny, who pulled her aside with a meaningful look.

"Don't drink the champagne," Ginny told her. "It's spiked with veritaserum."

"What? Who spiked it?"

"I did. Just a drop!" Ginny added quickly, seeing the look on Hermione's face. "Listen, I'd be the last person to wish for last year's reign of terror back. But things around here have gotten a little dull. Just let me have my fun this once."

"I _always_ let you have your fun," Hermione scolded her. Suddenly Luna's actions towards Professor Scammander made sense.

"Oi, Hermione," exclaimed Smith, appearing at her side, "care to dance?"

"What?" Hermione asked a little more rudely than she had intended. "I—I'm a little busy at the moment."

"Ah, come on," Smith insisted. "Just one dance."

"It's already starting," Ginny whispered, winking.

"I don't think so," Hermione said more forcefully. "Sorry. I, er, I just had a dance and I'm quite tired."

Smith wrinkled his nose in annoyance, a look which did not suit him, and he attempted to take her by the hand. "What's the matter, too good to have a little fun?"

"Funny, I don't remember Slughorn asking you here to harass his guests, Smith," said a cold voice, and Malfoy stepped into view. Ginny, who had been halfway to hexing Smith, visibly tightened her grip on her wand. "In fact, I don't remember him inviting you at all."

"What would you know about it, Malfoy?" Smith retorted. "Don't tell me you're one of the wait staff?"

"One of the conditions of my acceptance into Slughorn's class," Malfoy muttered, flushing furiously. His dress robes did indeed match the color of the wall hangings. Hermione could not understand why he was admitting to it until she saw the half empty champagne flute in his hand. Ginny's prank was achieving widespread results.

"A waiter?" Ginny piped up. "That's interesting, Malfoy, because none of us here appear to have drinks."

For a moment Hermione was sure that Malfoy was about to snap. His lips tightened and his face grew, if possible, even paler than usual. Then the moment passed and with a flick of his wand he summoned a set of glasses from a nearby table, which zoomed over to the party without spilling a drop. He proceeded to stalk away into a dark corner, but not before throwing a dark look over at his shoulder at Smith, who dropped Hermione's hand at last.

All through the room disturbances were breaking out as Ginny's veritaserum took effect. Diluted as the truth serum was, it appeared to be affecting the guests just strongly enough so that they voiced their thoughts indiscriminately, without realizing what was happening to them. Over by the largest pumpkin in the room Slughorn was singing a song about a wizard named Odo at the top of his voice, joined by Professor Scammander and Luna. Hagrid, too, had joined the party, regaling a startled Katrice Burbage with the tale of how he had brought his brother Grawp to live in the Forbidden Forest.

"I THINK YOU'RE REALLY BRAVE AND KIND!" Hannah was shouting at Neville by the refreshments table, her hands waving through the air in frustration.

"I FEEL THE SAME WAY ABOUT YOU!" Neville shouted back, stamping his foot. "AND—Whoops! Sorry, Hermione."

In his distress Neville had brandished his champagne a little too wildly, and a great deal of it had hit Hermione in the face.

"Never mind, Neville, it's alright," Hermione sighed, casting a nonverbal _Aguamentia_ to clean her hair and return it to its bushy state, and transfiguring her stained dress back into her regular robes. "Listen, make my excuses to Slughorn if you see him, will you? I've had enough partying for one night."

Neville nodded, though Hermione was not entirely sure he had heard her over Hannah's wailing. She left Slughorn's office in all haste, intending to head straight back to her dormitory, and caught a glimpse of black and silver dress robes trailing around the corner in the direction of the third floor corridor. Hermione had no doubt to whom they belonged, and where he was headed.

"Damn you, Malfoy," she whispered, biting her lip. She had no desire whatsoever to go chasing after him, yet if he had entered the Room of Requirement he was almost certainly in danger. Hermione had told all previous members of the DA not to seek out the room, but had not thought to extend her warning to anyone in Slytherin.

Grudgingly, Hermione followed Malfoy down the corridor and stopped in front of the blank stretch of wall she knew well, closing her eyes and pacing.

_I need to find Malfoy; I need the place where Malfoy is; I need to talk to Draco Malfoy... And if he lands me in the owlery again I'll kill him._

She opened her eyes and there was the door, complete with the slight shimmer she had learned to recognize. Pulling it open, she took and deep breath and entered the cavernous space that had once been the Room of Hidden Things. It was almost unrecognizable. The Fiendfyre had damaged everything from the endless towers of mismatched objects to the walls themselves, leaving only ash and soot and twisted hunks of metal behind. Malfoy stood at the center of one such heap of wreckage, tracing patterns in the dust with the point of his shoe.

"I used to come here last year to escape detention with the Carrows, when Longbottom and his band of louts weren't using it," Malfoy said without turning around, speaking in the expressionless tone of someone under the influence of veritaserum. "Thought I might be left alone here after that pathetic excuse for a party. Guess I was wrong."

"You... knew how the DA were meeting last year?" Hermione said incredulously.

Malfoy shrugged, still facing away from her. "How else would they have been getting around?"

"And you didn't tell the Carrows?"

"Snape knew, I think. He kept dropping hints about how Longbottom and Weasley might be resisting us. I figured if he wasn't going to do anything about it, the Carrows didn't need to know." Malfoy turned to look at her at last, taking in her disheveled appearance. "I prefer you this way."

"You—you what?" Hermione stammered, sure she had heard him wrong.

"All that," he gestured in the direction of the party to indicate her hair and dress from earlier in the night, "was nice. But it had nothing to do with you."

All at once Hermione decided that she would rather the effects of the veritaserum wore off as soon as possible. Malfoy shook his head, appearing nonplussed by his own sincerity, and made to leave.

"Wait," Hermione said, following him to the door. "Wait, you have to be careful. You can't come in here anymore, this room isn't stable. That's—that's why I was in the window at the owlery that time. It sent me there."

"Merlin's sake, Granger, I know this room, all right?" Malfoy snapped, throwing the door open and stepping through. Cursing, Hermione followed him and found herself in...

"The Slytherin common room?" she said, looking around in distaste at the dark, unwelcoming upholstery.

"How..." Malfoy breathed, looking back at the door to the Room of Requirement, which had now turned into a regular dormitory door. "What the hell? How do you know this is our common room, Granger?"

"Harry described it to me," Hermione replied. "I gave him and Ron polyjuice to break in here and interrogate you about the Chamber of Secrets in second year. So now do you believe me? Don't go waltzing into the Room of Requirement anymore, or don't say I didn't warn you."

And she left, secure in the knowledge that she had had the last word.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: You guys, my sister gave me an idea for a new fic the other day about a Dementor who is shunned by his people because he doesn't want to suck souls, and it's really stuck with me. I think I might want to try writing it. What do you think? Anyway, I'm actually sort of pleased with this chapter, and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to anyone who has started following/reviewing this fic, I really appreciate it. Cheers!  
**

**CHAPTER THREE – PATENTED DAYDREAM CHARMS**

November brought with it cold gusts of sleet and snow, enveloping the castle grounds in a dreary quilt of silence as the students counted the days until Christmas. On the final Saturday of the month a dash of excitement was felt when the entire school made its way down to the Quidditch pitch to view the first Quidditch match of the season between Slytherin and Gryffindor. Hermione walked to the stands with Neville and Luna, each of them bedecked from head to toe in red and gold, ready to cheer on Ginny. As captain of the Gryffindor team, Ginny had begun to take Quidditch even more seriously, if possible, than Harry once had. Her zeal to defeat Slytherin was unparalleled, leading to many a nasty confrontation in the halls with various Slytherin players. Hermione could not help but notice as she sat down, however, that the number of green and silver-clad supporters had greatly diminished compared with what she remembered. Support for the Slytherin team, and for Malfoy, its captain, was in short supply these days.

Harmione paid little attention to the introductory portion of the match in which the captains shook hands. The memory of her last Hogsmead visit with Ron was still fresh in her mind, filling her with a warm glow of contentment that was better than butterbeer. The phrase _I'm sorry Hermione_ had been put to frequent use, and Hermione had been unable to help forgiving Ron when she saw the earnest, guileless way his eyes widened as he apologized. And after all, it was only until Christmas.

"And Gryffindor captain Ginny Weasley rises into the air on—would you look at that boys and girls—a _Firebolt_!" called Euan Abercrombie, who had taken over for Luna as a slightly less controversial announcer. "We haven't seen one of those in play since the days of Harry Potter!"

Hermione laughed at the thought of Harry and Ginny plotting this surprise coup against the Slytherins. After the Marauder's Map she was not all that surprised that Harry had seen fit to lend Ginny his broom. In fact she thought that if the need arose, Harry would have given Ginny his cloak, his house, anything at all, really.

The match lasted a record twelve minutes, during which Katrice Burbage, the school's only female beater, managed a spectacular attack on Slytherin chaser Harper that caused two hundred students to leap to their feet and applaud. Ginny had put together an excellent team, and she herself scored ten of Gryffindor's fourteen goals. The final score was two hundred and sixty to thirty.

Hermione rushed down onto the field to hug Ginny, pushing her way through a throng of admirers, and from the corner of her eye saw Malfoy touch down nearby, paler-faced than ever. His teammates were throwing him dirty looks, which he ignored as he made his way slowly towards the changing rooms. Hermione frowned a little. If she was being honest, based upon her limited knowledge of Quidditch, she thought that Malfoy had played quite well and that his team simply had not appeared to be putting much effort in. He had certainly struck an impressive figure as he swerved through the air in a flash of silver, taller and more broad-shouldered than any other seventh year on the pitch. It was as though his teammates had wanted to take him down a peg, and had been willing to sabotage their own chances at winning to do so.

"Why the hurry, Malfoy?" Jimmy Peakes shouted. "Don't you want to tell us what sorry losers we are?"

Malfoy faltered, but kept walking away.

"Leave it, Peakes, we already won," said Ginny.

Peakes ignored her. "Well? Don't you want to tell me your father will hear about this?"

There were snickers all around, even from a few of the remaining Slytherin players, who did not attempt to back up their captain.

"Malfoy's father couldn't hear the Hobgoblins if they bashed their instruments against his skull," Katrice Burbage added, and Peakes laughed. With a pang Hermione remembered that Charity Burbage had been killed at Malfoy Manor.

All at once Malfoy whipped around and drew his wand in a movement so fast that the Gryffindors did not see it coming. With the practiced ease born out of her time on the run, Hermione pulled out her own wand and waved it discreetly, whispering "_Evitas momentas_." The spell did not hit Malfoy hard enough to knock him off his feet, but had an effect similar to that of the impediment jinx. His movements were slowed and Hermione saw his eyes widen as he found his ability to wield his wand impeded in particular. The Gryffindors, who had not noticed Hermione's interference, burst into renewed gales of laughter at Malfoy's incompetence.

Malfoy's eyes locked with Hermione's, and she looked away, hoping that he would understand that she was trying to help, that he was outnumbered ten to one.

"Come on," Ginny insisted, pulling Peakes and Burbage away by the scruff of their uniforms and giving Hermione a grateful nod. "Let's go celebrate."

"You go on ahead," Hermione said. "I'll catch you up. I promised Hagrid I'd pop by for tea."

Ginny shrugged, and soon she and the rest of her team along with the Slytherins had vanished. Only Malfoy remained.

"_Finite_," said Hermione.

Malfoy left without a word.

* * *

_Hermione,_

_Paris is beautiful. You would love it here, and I hope you'll visit some time. George showed me a library here that would blow you away. He ran into Angeline Johnson the other day, if you'll believe it. I guess she was traveling with Puddlemere United, and they seem to be getting along really well._

_How's Hogwarts? George reckons you'll have taken over for McGonagall before long, and probably freed all the elves, too. I miss our Hogsmead weekends already._

_Speaking of which, Hermione, it turns out I might not be able to come back to England quite yet. I may be staying here over the holidays, at least until Easter. I know that's not what I told you at first, but George has decided to expand his WonderWitch line to cater to Beauxbatons students, and he just can't spare me at the moment. I'll be thinking of you every day, and I swear I won't stay past Easter._

_Best,_

_Ron._

_PS: I almost forgot. Guess what? Fleur is pregnant! Bill is over the moon about it. They're expecting their baby some time in May. _

"What do you think?" asked Ron, taking the letter back from George and tying it to Pigwidgeon's leg.

"What are you blaming me for?" George asked. "I told you, you're free to go home any time."

"I know, I know," Ron muttered, his ears turning pink. "It's just... I want it to be a surprise. I want to do it properly."

George grimaced. "You're going to be in deep trouble, that's what I think."

"I know," Ron sighed. "But she'll understand. It'll be worth it in the end."

"Ear, ear."

"Oh would you stop with the ear jokes already?" cried Ron in exasperation.

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that." George ducked to avoid the inkpot Ron threw at his head, laughing.

* * *

Draco stalked across the grounds, cursing as his shoes filled themselves with snow. He had done the work, trained hard, run through all kinds of strategies and plays... and then Weasley had shown up with Potter's _Firebolt_. His team hadn't even bothered to put up a fight. He had been reduced to putting up with the Gryffindors' inane taunts about his father. As if any of them knew a single _thing_ about his family.

He had waited nearly an hour before leaving the Slytherin changing rooms to avoid running into any stragglers on his way back, but apparently it had not been enough, because just as he passed the oaf's cabin on the outskirts of the forest he saw the door open and a small figure in a heavy fur cloak emerge. It was Granger. Draco rolled his eyes in her direction; of course it was her—she was unavoidable, though admittedly her presence was not nearly as irksome without Potter and Weasley following behind acting like a pair of smarmy gits. He had no hope of passing by her unnoticed in all this snow, so he waited, resigned, as she approached him. She was melting a path through the snow with her wand while he plodded around like some common Muggle, which served only to irritate him further.

"What do you want, Granger?" Draco asked, refusing to slow his pace to accommodate her.

"I'm sorry they taunted you," was her response. He could have cursed her then. What in the world would possess her to say something so dense?

"What do you care?" he asked, doing his best to sound far above concern. "It's nothing I didn't do to you for six years."

"Yes but as has been discussed in the past, you are a git," she replied, smiling. "I'm not."

Bloody Gryffindors, Draco thought, soiling themselves with excitement at the first opportunity to do a good deed. It angered him even further that she appeared to think of him as some sort of charity case, as someone to be pitied.

"Where did you get the Polyjuice?" he asked when none of his other thoughts presented themselves as appropriate topics of conversation. The question had been driving him barmy ever since she had brought it up, keeping him up at night as he wondered how on Earth she had pulled it off. Certainly Potter and Weasley had not been the masterminds of the operation. And he knew for a fact that Snape had not kept any Polyjuice on hand that year, as that had been the year Draco's father had petitioned the board to take the potion off the curriculum for some sort of trifling "Save the boomslangs" campaign.

Granger raised her eyebrows, but did not ask what he was referring to. "I brewed it."

"You brewed Polyjuice potion," Draco repeated, appalled. "In second year."

She gave a modest shrug that did not fool him in the slightest. Oftentimes when Draco had been younger his father had gone off on extensive tirades about the falling standards at Hogwarts, as evidenced by the presence of a mudblood in his son's own class. Yet, in the same breath, Lucius had also found ways to snidely undermine Draco for being outscored in every test by the very same mudblood. At the time the inherent contradiction in his father's philosophy had only given Draco more cause to hate Granger. Now, it left him more perplexed than anything.

Polyjuice. Second year. Honestly.

"It wasn't easy," Granger went on. "We had to distract Snape and steal some ingredients from his private stores. And before you think about reporting me to McGonagall and having me expelled, you should remember which of us here has an Order of Merlin," she added, suddenly worried.

Draco could not help himself. He seized her by the shoulders and shook her once, softly so as not to appear threatening, to convince himself that she was really there. Granger's eyes widened but did not register fear, and she merely looked at him. He could pick out the freckles on her nose and feel her breath on his face. She was an unwelcome intrusion into every ideal he had once held as sacred, but she was real.

"Don't ever break into our common room again," was all he could think to say. Then he mounted his broom and flew to the castle, rules be damned, to avoid having to look at her.

Two hours later, sitting in the Headmistress' office and listening to that swot Dawlish go on and on about the rules of his probation, Draco found himself unable to focus. His mind kept wandering back to the single fact of Granger having successfully brewed Polyjuice potion at the age of twelve. He thought back to the first time he had called her a mudblood—to the rush of adrenaline and power he had experienced then, and to the satisfying image of Weasley belching slugs—and wondered if she had been brewing it at the time. What a monumental joke.

Draco caught Snape's portrait staring at him and realized that he was leaning back in his seat, making it exceedingly plain that he was not paying attention. He ignored the look of disdain levelled at him by Snape, straining to catch on to Dawlish's never-ending speech. The revelation that Snape had been on Potter's side all along had felt to Draco like a tremendous betrayal.

"Is that clear?" Dawlish was saying.

"As veritaserum," Draco told him, hitching an innocent expression on his face. Dawlish glared at him suspiciously before vacating the office, no doubt to alert McGonagall that Malfoy the unstoppable criminal madman was about to be set loose on the castle once more.

"Old codger," Draco muttered, getting up to leave.

"If I were in your position, I should not be so prone to condescension," said the snide voice of Phineas Nigellus Black.

"Yeah? Well if I were in _your_ position I'd be a bloody portrait, wouldn't I, and nobody would care what I had to say," Draco shot back, his already inflamed temper flaring up. He remembered Nigellus with intense dislike from an early childhood visit to the House of Black in Grimmauld Place, when the former Headmaster had chastised him for his lack of knowledge about the pureblood lineage of his dearly departed aunt, Bellatrix. Draco had been shocked to learn that his family was distantly related, through the Blacks, to the Weasley family.

The House of Black belonged to Potter now, he remembered. As if Potter did not already take everything that was rightfully Draco's. Lucius had once revealed to Draco, as they were shopping for his schoolbooks before first year, that it was believed by many former Death Eaters that Potter would become the next great Dark Lord. Thinking to ingratiate himself with the future pureblood regime, Draco had done his utmost to befriend Potter when they arrived at Hogwarts together. And Potter had thrown the offer in his face.

"I can never stomach the insufferable conviction of children that they are right in all matters, even those about which they know nothing at all," Nigellus drawled, interrupting Draco's reflections. "Why, I remember one student in particular who caused me more headaches than I care to relive. Always questioning my every pronouncement..."

* * *

_A seventeen year old Albus Dumbledore stood before newly appointed Headmaster Phineas Nigellus, smiling serenely at the Headmaster's harassed expression. His Head Boy's badge was pinned irreverently to his hat, which seemed to cause the Headmaster undue offense._

"_Now, then," Nigellus began, glancing over a sheaf of parchment of varying colors, from green to violet to orange to powder blue. "Dumbledore, is it?"_

"_Sir," Albus confirmed, inclining his head._

"_I must say that your paper on the fluctuation of power when conjuring from concentrated magical elements was most impressive. Stellar, in fact. Drawing comparison to the legend of Peverell's box was an inspired choice. However I have called you here because Professor Prewett expressed... shall I say concerns, regarding your enthusiasm for the subject matter."_

"_I was not aware that enthusiasm was to be discouraged, sir," said Albus with a twinkle in his eye. "Consider me well warned, sir."_

"_I will not tolerate cheek," Nigellus said shortly. "Do you understand Professor Prewett's assessment as I have explained it?"_

"_I fear Professor Prewett may have misinterpreted my passion for the subject as a concrete belief in the Peverell box, sir. Rest assured that this is not the case. However, as outlined in my paper, the box would now be several centuries old, and would have been employed over the years to consume countless prized magical artifacts. The power laying dormant in the box would be astronomical. If such an object did exist, I can hardly see how any wizard would not wish to possess it."_

"_Indeed," said Nigellus, narrowing his eyes. A hush had fallen over the room, and many of the portraits lining the walls were observing Albus Dumbledore keenly, moved by his obvious passion and eloquence. The very air around the serene young man seemed to have taken on an electrical quality, so much so that it almost crackled around him._

"_I shall convey your sentiments to Professor Prewett," Nigellus said, setting down Albus's colourful file with distaste._

"_Oh no need, Professor Black," replied Dumbledore, who was already letting himself out. "I'll let him know myself the next time I attend one of Professor Prewett's private dinner parties."_

* * *

"Such impertinence," Nigellus finished with distaste. Throughout his tale every pair of eyes in the room had flickered regularly over to Dumbledore's empty portrait uncomfortably. Nigellus appeared not to have noticed. Now fully absorbed in his story, he went on pompously, "And then there was that mudblood friend of his—"

"_Don't_ use that word," shouted Snape's portrait, startling them all. Draco stared at Snape's livid face incredulously. He had never seen Snape look so angry. Potter's words came back to him, spoken all those weeks ago in the ruins of Hogwarts, spoken to Voldemort himself. _He loved her for nearly all his life, from the time they were children_. So it was really true then. Snape had loved Potter's mother.

The world was going mad.

(_"Draco, move this scum outside. If you haven't got the guts to finish them, then leave them in the courtyard for me."_)

That night Draco went to the Astronomy tower to look over the school grounds, thinking of the choice he had made there. Unlike Potter, he did not need to rely on some swotty cloak to navigate the castle at night. Instead he skillfully dodged ghosts and trick steps and Mrs. Norris and came to stand alone at the top of the tower for several hours. He could never understand why he had been unable to go through with his task that day, why he had lowered his wand when Dumbledore was cornered.

But for the first time, Draco was glad he had.

* * *

"The mudblood," said Narcissa Malfoy quite abruptly over Christmas dinner. "See if you can ingratiate yourself with her."

"Bloody effing Merlin, mother, don't you think it's about time we stopped throwing that word around?" Draco snapped.

"You will watch your language at this table!" Narcissa said coldly. "This family has been dragged through the muck quite enough."

"Indeed, association with blood traitors and riff-raff has been a distasteful, if necessary activity," Lucius agreed, mistaking his wife's meaning. "Yet the Granger girl is gold with the wizarding community at the moment. Every Ministry department will be vying to take her on the moment she graduates from Hogwarts. You will heed your mother and make your peace with her for the good of this family. The mudbloods will not maintain the upper hand long, but our world is in their hands for now."

"Right," Draco muttered. _Sod off_, he added mentally.

This argument had been in keeping with the general tone of the entire holiday at Malfoy Manner. For two weeks Draco's mother had alternated between fussing over him and doling out passive-aggressive advice, while his father had kept up a constant stream of demands that made Draco want to pound his head against the dinner table. Sometimes he thought he would have been better off staying at Hogwarts with hostile housemates for Christmas.

"The whole Weasley clan has more Orders of Merlin now than they know what to do with, though they still haven't found two Galleons to rub together," Lucius was now saying. "And with the mudblood likely to join that clan before long—"

"What?" Draco shouted, completely diverted.

"What with the way she's been carrying on with Potter's lapdog," Narcissa agreed disdainfully. "It's been plastered all over the _Prophet_. The Weasleys may be filth but still... pureblood lineage for centuries, running off with a mudblood. A complete disgrace."

"Right," Draco said again. How Granger would ever stand to hold a full conversation with Weasley if they were married was a mystery.

Draco shook his head. There was no reason at all why he should care.

"And the nerve of them, to think themselves so high above their company," Lucius continued relentlessly. "As if we should actually require their _help_."

"What are you talking about?" Draco asked, bewildered.

"Potter and Granger's testimony on your behalf, at your trial, Draco," Narcissa told him. "Simply unbelievable. Trying to make a mockery of us—Darling, where are you going?"

But Draco had already left the dining room.

* * *

Dr and Mrs Granger's flat in Sydney, Australia was modest but comfortable, and Hermione woke on Christmas morning glad that she had chosen to make the harrowing trip there by Floo powder rather than stay at the Burrow, where Harry and Ginny would likely have been very kind but embarrassed by her presence nonetheless. As for Ron, Hermione thought sadly, she would patiently await his return, but she would not visit him until he began telling her the truth about his plans.

A generous pile of presents lay in a heap at the foot of her bed, and she brushed ample amounts of hair from her face so as to begin sorting through them. The first was a leather-bound copy of Crime and Punishment from her parents, which she admired for a moment before placing it on her bedside table. Next were Mrs Weasley and Hagrid's customary jumper and rock cakes, which she set aside, as the Australian heat did not lend itself to wearing knitted sweaters and her parents would not be pleased by the effects of the rock cakes. Harry had sent her a charmed spyglass which could translate any rune at which it was pointed. Ginny had gotten her a patented daydream charm from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, and Neville a wand polishing kit.

Ron's gift was a spectacular ruby necklace, the price of which she did not dare guess. His card was signed _Best._ Hermione felt something constrict in her throat as she tried it on, and after a moment of fumbling with the clasp she placed it with her book on the bedside table instead.

Her parents would be out shopping for pudding, so Hermione eyed her presents once more until her gaze fell upon the patented daydream charm. She rolled her eyes at the lavish image on the front of the box displaying a woman swooning in the arms of a roguish looking man on the deck of a pirate ship. Lifting the box to her eyeline, she read the instructions.

_An hour of enjoyment in three simple steps! Fix your concentration upon the desired location and characters of your daydream, ingest the tasteless, harmless patented Weasley daydream pill, and sit back for a genuine, realistic daydream guaranteed to be top quality. Easy to fit into the average school lesson or marital spat!_

_WARING: Subject's mind must be unilaterally fixed upon desired events of daydream, otherwise surreal or blurred events may occur._

What could be the harm, she asked herself?

Feeling almost reckless, and very unlike herself, Hermione opened the box and thought back to the days at Hogwarts she had always enjoyed most. She, Harry, and Ron, down by the lake, sitting under the sun and studying, or else simply enjoying some pumpkin juice and chatting about something inconsequential. Peaceful. Closing her eyes, she swallowed the small yellow pill.

Hermione opened her eyes and gasped. She was sitting by the black lake with Harry and Ron on either side of her, holding an ice cold pitcher of pumpkin juice in her hand. She could feel the wind in her hair, the sun on her face, and even see the giant squid's tentacles emerging from the water in the distance.

"Incredible," she exclaimed, reaching out to touch Ron's arm. It was both solid and convincingly warm.

"What are you on about?" Ron asked in that baffled tone that was by turns infuriating and endearing.

"Just... this homework Flitwick's given us," Hermione lied, grinning at him.

"We've got until Wednesday, Hermione," Harry said lazily, trailing a hand through the water at the lake's edge.

"Yeah, Granger, leave it," Ron agreed.

"I—What?" Hermione stammered. "What did you just call me?"

Ron looked at her intently, and all at once she was not sure that his hair had ever been that pale, or his nose that straight.

"Did I stutter, Granger?" he drawled. "I said leave it. There are better things to do."

"What's happening?" Hermione cried, panicked. When he did not answer her she turned to Harry for help, but Harry was gone.

"This muck's rubbish," said Ron, who was no longer Ron at all but definitely Malfoy. He drained his cup of pumpkin juice into the lake and took her by the hand. "Come with me, Granger. This way."

Hermione did not know what made her stand up and follow him through the grounds back to the castle, running as fast as her legs could carry her, laughing as though the whole situation was funny rather than horrifying. Objectively, she supposed that the daydream had taken over and that her mind was constructing events over which she had no control. Nevertheless she was finding it difficult to separate the absurdity of the situation from the genuine enjoyment she thought she felt at following Malfoy through the school, at the pressure of his hand on hers, at the dancing unfamiliar light in his eyes so unlike the disdain she was used to.

"We're going to the kitchens?" she asked when their destination became clear.

"Well spotted, Granger, go to the top of the class," Malfoy replied snidely. How could even the dream Malfoy be such a prat? "The elves want to see you. Hurry."

A jagged leap in her consciousness reminiscent of the passage of time in dreams brought them inside the kitchens all at once, and Hermione found herself surrounded by beaming house elves, all of whom had eyes the exact same shade of blue as Ron's.

"We is no longer working for our Masters, Miss," squeaked one of the elves, clutching at her sleeve as all the other elves crowded nearer and nearer. "We is leaving them, just like you wanted."

"That's wonderful," Hermione croaked. Malfoy's thumb was tracing circles across her palm and wrist, making it rather difficult to concentrate upon the elves.

"We is only going to work for you now, Miss," the elf continued, now clutching onto her arm with all its might. "We is doing your bidding day and night. Miss is not needing to pay us. We is happy to be serving Miss."

"What?" Hermione said, trying to clear her head. "No, no that's not what I want. That's not what _you _need. It's not supposed to happen this way."

"But we is preparing everything for you just so," squeaked the elf, its eyes growing wide in fear and remorse. "Is Miss not happy with our work? We is trying harder from now on, Miss!"

"No!" Hermione shouted, trying to make her voice heard over the desperate clamoring of the elves while Malfoy's hand drifted up to her hair. "You don't need to try at all. Work for _yourselves_, for Merlin's sake, don't you understand?"

But the elves were not listening. Three of them together had brought out an ornate silver tray upon which was placed an exquisite ruby necklace. It weighed them down so heavily that she was afraid they would be crushed before long.

"Not to worry, Granger," said Malfoy, appearing to read her thoughts—of course he was reading her thoughts, Hermione reminded herself in a last-ditch attempt to maintain her hold on reality, it was all a dream—and picking up the necklace. His fingers sent shivers down her spine as he brushed the hair away from the nape of her neck to fasten the necklace for her.

"Is Miss pleased with our gift?" the elf practically shrieked at her.

"Yes it's—it's very, er," Hermione began, her breath catching in her throat as Malfoy began to trace the contours of the necklace.

"Miss will be leaving now, then?"

"What?"

But the elves were already pushing her out, the multitude of tiny hands pressing her towards the kitchen door, which was shimmering in an unpleasantly familiar way.

"Wait," Hermione shouted, alarmed. "Wait, we can't go through this door!"

"We can do whatever we want, Granger," Malfoy whispered in her ear, and pushed her through the door.

When they came out on the other side they were standing on the railing at the top of the Quidditch stands, and one of the elves was still holding on to Hermione's sleeves. Bewildered and frightened of falling she began to wave her arms through the air, accidentally launching the poor elf into the void on the other side of the stands, where it fell away, squeaking unintelligibly.

"Not the best way to send an owl," Malfoy remarked. Something stirred in Hermione's memory. _What was she doing?_ Malfoy's face was inching closer to hers, his arm snaking around her back. _What the_ hell _was she doing?_ All she could see were his eyes now, closing in on hers. _Merlin's pants!_

Hermione awoke in her parents' flat in Australia and sat bolt upright in her bed, gasping.

"Bloody hell," she murmured.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Lots of angst in this one, guys! It's a bit shorter than the others but more will be along story has sort of taken over my life and it's now fully written, just sitting on my desktop waiting to be published. There are seven chapters total so I'm gonna update daily because I have no self control. Kind of like these characters, right? No, I kid. Anyway, reviews are appreciated, and enjoy!  
**

**CHAPTER FOUR – THE SHIMMERING DOORWAY**

_Dear Ron,_

_Please, please come back to England. I know you were upset when I decided to come back to Hogwarts, but Paris is a completely different matter. I don't know why you feel you need to stay there so long, but I miss you terribly and I can't stand it. There will be plenty of time for us to make some more gold after I take my NEWT's and you take your Auror exams. I know you still want to, don't you? Please come home._

_Love,_

_Hermione._

_PS: I do hope the shop is going well. And thank you for the necklace. It was really lovely._

* * *

Granger was ignoring him studiously, thoroughly, relentlessly. Every time they had a class together after returning from Christmas holiday Draco tried to catch her eye, and every time she applied her oversized brain to coming up with hundreds of ways of avoiding his gaze. It was even more maddening than her unflinching kindness.

He managed at last to corner her in the entrance hall as she was badgering a hapless fifth year about that ridiculous house elf crusade she was always going on about.

"It's only one sickle," Granger was pleading. "Really, Zandow, I know you want to impress Katrice, don't you? She's already joined."

"I don't know," Zandow replied, his eyes darting all around as he tried to scope out a means of escape.

Granger changed tact all at once, becoming suddenly waspish. "Don't you _care_ that house elves have worse living conditions than flobberworms?" she snapped, waving a flyer right under his nose. "Didn't we all fight a war for _change_ and _justice_?"

"Listen, I've really got to go," Zandow interrupted her. "Loads of homework, sorry." He ducked under her arm, mumbling something over his shoulder about Hagrid and flesh-eating bowtruckles.

"I'll take one of those," Draco said, reaching into his pocket and flicking a sickle through the air so that it landed neatly in her collection tin.

Granger stared at him as though he were a kneazle that had learned to talk.

"One of your _flyers_, Granger," he added, speaking slowly to avoid confusing her further. "You know, the pieces of paper in your hand you almost just shoved down Zandow's throat."

She neither thanked him nor offered him a flyer. Instead she scowled and asked, "Why?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, Granger, the Malfoy name isn't exactly flying too high with the _Daily Prophet_ these days," Draco told her lightly. "It couldn't hurt my cause to look like I care about kitchen gremlins or whatever the hell—"

"_House elves_," said Granger in a shrill voice. "You seriously expect me to believe you care so little about them? Your family owned one!"

"Owned being the operative word," Draco pointed out. "Until the Chosen One freed him on us. How is Dobby these days anyway? Working in some hovel like Arthur Weasley's house? Cleaning the one pot all five hundred of them eat out of?"

Granger looked at him strangely. "Dobby's dead."

Oh, hell.

"Look," Draco tried again, "I figure I owe you one, all right? After you and Potter so unnecessarily displaced yourselves to come to my trial. A little high handed of you, but I wouldn't expect any different from a lot of self-righteous Gryffindors." And he had actually liked Dobby. Distasteful as it was to admit, the elf had always brought him hot chocolate when his father got carried away with reprimanding Draco for some imagined shortcoming and yelled at him for hours on end. When Granger still looked unconvinced he added, "I could contribute more gold than you've ever seen in your life, you know. And that's just what I've got in my pocket at the moment. So are you going to give me a bloody badge or not?"

Incredibly, she shook her head.

"No, Malfoy, I couldn't take your blood money," she said, in a tone so unconvincing she did not even sound as though she believed the argument herself. Her eyes kept darting to his face and then away from it very quickly. She looked almost embarrassed.

"Very funny," Draco said, beginning to grow impatient. "Now let's have a badge and be done with it."

"No, really," Granger insisted. "You'd only be doing it for the publicity and I need members who are really interested in helping, and... and I'm sorry, Malfoy, but the answer is no."

She scurried away, leaving Draco astonished and a little humiliated at what he had just tried to do. He recalled the first time he had done something that could be considered nice for Pansy Parkinson—he had bought her some necklace or another, because his mother had suggested it—and she had launched herself at him immediately and snogged him silly. The incident had set the standard in Draco's mind for how easily he could get women to accede to his wishes, whether through his wealth or through his pureblood status. Not that he wanted Granger to snog him, for Merlin's sake there were limits, but her refusal stumped him.

In the back of his mind he pictured the Yule Ball in their fourth year, when Granger had shocked the whole school by showing up with Victor Krum on her arm. There was something about Granger, though he himself certainly could not see what it was, that made blokes lose their heads over her. He would simply have to try a little harder. After all, Draco was not in the habit of leaving a debt unsettled.

* * *

_Professor Erasmus Gaunt was on his way to dinner in the Great Hall when he stopped in the middle of the third floor corridor to admire a painting he had not previously noticed, which depicted a group of wizards in emerald robes kneeling around a small metal box, as though gathered in prayer. Back and forth from one end of the large canvas to the other he paced, examining the well-preserved quality of the oil paint, when a faint rumbling caused him to turn around. _

_There, just behind him, was a door where a moment before there had only been a blank stretch of wall. Intrigued, Gaunt opened the door and entered a room filled with rows and rows of tables bearing every succulent dish the imagination could conjure, from roast quail to pineapple glazed ham to treacle tarts. _

"_What in the name of Salazar?" he began, striding from table to table to verify that the food was well and truly solid rather than an illusion. _

_When Gaunt was finally convinced that the existence of the room and its mystery banquet was no trick, he grew suspicious at once and withdrew his wand from a sheath in his belt._

"_Incendio horribilis," he roared, holding the desired shape of the flames he conjured carefully in his mind so as to avoid losing control of the dangerous spell. The Fiendfyre appeared to be having a most curious effect upon the room, however. Transfixed, Gaunt observed the flames as they made short work of consuming the tables and the food. And yet the tallest columns of fire only blackened the walls instead of incinerating them altogether, as should have happened. Someone, somehow, had warded the room against Fiendfyre._

_Gaunt's mind jumped all of a sudden to the portrait of the green-cloaked men out in the corridor, and inspiration struck him like lightning. Unfortunately Gaunt had forgotten, in his excitement, about the presence of the Fiendfyre, which overtook him hungrily within seconds. By the time he had screamed the counter-curse, he himself had already been consumed. Gaunt's wand fell to the floor with a clatter as the last of the cursed flames died out, leaving the room empty and quiet._

* * *

Hermione closed her book and looked expectantly up at Professor McGonagall, who appeared more bemused than enlightened.

"I fail to see the relevance of this admittedly thrilling anecdote, Miss Granger."

"It's about the Room of Requirement!" Hermione exclaimed, desperate for McGonagall to understand. "You see, Professor, my concerns about the room, which I told you about at the start of the year; the incident I had wherein I was transported to the owlery; the chapter in _Hogwarts, A History_ about Ignotus Peverell. It all fits together! And this record of Erasmus Gaunt's—it was never connected with the legend of Peverell's box or with the Room of Requirement because it was taken from a statement made by his portrait after his death and used as evidence in _Portraits Gone Wrong: Madcap Wizards and the Impressions they Make_. But I think it's all true, and it confirms my theory. Headmaster Selwyn meant to use Peverell's box to find the Chamber of Secrets, but when that failed he used it to conjure the Room of Requirement, which had similar properties as the object which originated it, only magnified tenfold. And the Fiendfyre that was let loose in the Room last May damaged a horcrux, which was strong enough to overload the Room with unused power. It's gone haywire now, you see, and it's seeking out revenge somehow. The students might be in danger."

Professor McGonagall stared at Hermione for a full minute after she had finished speaking, her face an unreadable mask. Just when Hermione had grown certain that McGonagall was about to pronounce her mad and banish her from her office, the Headmistress stood and walked over to Dumbledore's portrait.

"Your opinion?" she asked. Dumbledore merely winked and nodded in response. This seemed to be answer enough for McGonagall, however, because she turned an almost fond look on Hermione and said, "Your theory is certainly... colourful, Miss Granger. But if any student at this school were to convince me of such a tall tale, it would be yourself. I shall discuss it with the staff and make arrangements to investigate this Room of Requirement. In the meantime, I trust you will take great care when walking the halls?"

"Yes, professor," Hermione assured her.

She was on edge all the way down to Charms class from McGonagall's office, jumping at small noises and triple-checking every door she walked through. Part of the reason was indeed that she wished to heed McGonagall's advice. Another cause for her frayed nerves, however, was the fact that Ron had now failed to respond to her latest owl for over three weeks. Hermione had thought, at first, that the trip to France had simply been trying for the owl she had chosen. When she had discovered Ginny reading a letter from George dated only a week previously, however, she had begun to suspect otherwise.

At the best of times, Hermione told herself that Ron was experiencing a temporary reluctance to continue the relationship she had initiated with him in a moment of excitement during the war, or that he was simply trying to find the words to tell her that making gold in Paris was more important to him than spending time with her. He would come to his senses, she told herself. On the other hand, over the course of a few sleepless nights she had also managed to construct an elaborate scenario in her mind which included Ron laughing as he crumpled up her letter and walking away into the Paris sunset, arm in arm with a conveniently present Lavender Brown.

Hermione ran her fingers over the nape of her neck, sighing. She had not yet tried on the admittedly breathtaking necklace Ron had sent her for Christmas, feeling both that it was a little too gaudy for her everyday taste, and that she could not in good faith wear it while she was unsure Ron even cared whether or not she did. Ginny had the tact not to comment, though Hermione knew that she was surprised not to have seen it around her neck even once.

Temporarily banishing all thoughts of her troubles, Hermione sat down at the front of Charms class and smiled at Neville, ready to take on a new topic.

"Twenty galleons."

Hermione turned to face Malfoy and sighed impatiently at the smug look he was giving her. Behind her back, Neville grimaced.

"For the last time, Malfoy, _no_," she said, speaking loudly to ensure that the words would penetrate his thick skull. "Last Friday was ten galleons, and this Wednesday was fifteen and a rare hippogriff claw charm bracelet, which as I told you was barbaric and frankly disgusting. So you can just stop asking, because I will not help you hookdwink the media into thinking that you're a humanitarian."

"Technically, Granger, house elves aren't human, so I'm not a humanitarian," Malfoy drawled in response. "Try to keep up."

Hermione's furious retort was cut short by the arrival of Bill, who swept to the front of the room looking excited.

"Ready, everyone?" he asked. "Because—and I think you'll like this—we're set to begin work today on... _Obliviation!_"

There was an appreciative murmur as the class exchanged nervous glances and assured each other of how difficult this unit was likely to be. Hermione restrained herself from sighing with great difficulty.

"As you may know," Bill began, "Obliviation isn't just waving your wand and making someone's eyes go blank. There's a real subtlety to it, because you have to be careful to take away only those memories which need erasing and nothing more. If done wrong Obliviation can get very messy. I once knew a bloke, very unfortunate, who botched an Obliviation and took away his victim's ability to walk upstairs. Just that and nothing more. Poor man had to learn that single basic motor function all over again. Took him weeks, and his children mocked him for weeks after that, too. So—"

Bill's speech was interrupted when a swirling silver swan came flying through the wall, which startled a small scream out of Hannah Abbott and caused Neville to draw his wand in alarm. The swan opened its beak and spoke in what Hermione recognized as the voice of Fleur Delacour.

"Beel, come quickly, something ees wrong."

The swan vanished, leaving Bill standing stock-still for a moment with his jaw hanging open. Then he shook himself and looked at Hermione.

"I have to go," he said, looking panic-stricken. "Can you handle the rest of the class? Just basic introductions..."

"Yes of course, go!" Hermione urged him. "We'll make your excused to Professor McGonagall."

Before she had even finished her sentence Bill had seized a handful of Floo powder from a canister near the grate and disappeared in a burst of green flames.

"What was that all about then?" asked Zacharias Smith, sounding annoyed.

Hermione rounded on him. "His wife is pregnant, and obviously something's wrong. Did you expect him to hang about? Honestly."

"Go on then, Hermione," said Neville. "Bill—Professor Weasley told you to take over."

"I suppose." Hermione looked around at the class, suddenly apprehensive. She rose to face them, wracking her brain, and could not help but notice that Malfoy was giving her a look of deep amusement. "Right," she said briskly. "So, Obliviation. Like Bill said, it's about precision. The wand movement is a small twist of the wrist, as though you're drawing the memories out. But there's more to it than that. You have to get the subject talking about the thing you want to make them forget first, so that it's at the forefront of their mind. Yes, Padma?"

"Have you ever Obliviated anyone?"

Hermione silently debated a lie for a brief moment before deciding against it. The subject was rather personal, but with so little in the way of class material to work with, she would have to draw on whatever she could.

"My parents," she told Padma, eliciting several shocked gasps and a low whistle from Ernie. "They would have been, well, harmed, if anyone had found them out while I was traveling with Harry last year. So I erased myself from their memories and sent them to live in Australia."

Malfoy had gone very still, she noticed, and his mouth was set in a tense line.

"So you see it's possible to achieve very specific results with Obliviation. But obviously you can't all practice on real people yet because it's too much of a risk and I'm not in the mood to volunteer. So—" Hermione flicked her wand and conjured a large green and black-feathered bird which sat on Bill's desk looking mournfully at the class, "this is a rare cross between an augurey and a parakeet. Its song is rumored to foretell death, but that's only an urban myth. It actually has quite a remarkable ability to repeat any song put to it—"

"Where did you get it?" asked Smith without raising his hand. Malfoy threw him a look of annoyance so contemptuous that he might have been swatting a fly, before returning his attention to Hermione. She felt as though a megawatt lantern had been trained on her, and struggled to maintain the flow of her lesson.

"I noticed they got one in at the magical creatures store in Hogsmead a few months ago," she said. "I conjured it from there. They don't open until one in the afternoon, so I'll return it with plenty of time to spare, and they'll never miss it."

Smith looked impressed in spite of himself. When it appeared that he planned on keeping his mouth shut Hermione continued, glad to see that she now had the undivided attention of the class.

"Now, as I was saying, it will repeat any simple tune." Hermione hummed the first few bars of a lullaby her father had sung to her as a child, feeling slightly self-conscious about her imperfect alto. The bird sang it back at once in flawless pitch. "So if you'll take it in turns, all you have to do is teach it a short song, and then try to make it forget. Birds have dreadful short and long-term memories, so nothing you do to it will leave any lasting damage on its mental—What... Malfoy?"

Hermione's shoulders slumped as Malfoy stood and simply walked out of the room without a word. Had she been that dreadful at teaching? More likely Malfoy was simply being a git. Still, she made to follow him, wanting an explanation.

"Want me to set him straight, Hermione?" asked Neville while Ernie nodded fervently behind him.

"No, just—just practice the spell," Hermione replied before following Malfoy out the door. She caught up to him at the bottom of the staircase leading to the lower floor and placed herself so that she was blocking his path, with her arms crossed over her chest.

"What exactly was the meaning of that?" she asked, hoping to convey authority rather than the nervous uncertainty she was really feeling.

"Get out of my way, Granger."

"I don't understand what your problem is! I didn't get a single fact wrong in there, in fact everyone seemed to think I was doing rather well. Where do you get off thinking you're too good to be taught by me, after everything—"

"Why do you have to be such of bloody model of perfection all the time?" Malfoy burst out, effectively silencing her. "Everything you do is a slap in the face to me, to my father, to my family. You _can't be_ better than _everyone_ at _everything_. It doesn't make any sense, and it's driving me mad!"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Hermione asked in a small voice. Malfoy advanced on her, forcing her to retreat against the banister, and her heart began to race, whether from fear or from some incomprehensible thrill she got from arguing with him, it was impossible to tell.

"It's the whole bloody point," Malfoy bit out, towering over her and forcing her even further back. "You—it's as if you won't leave me alone, won't get out of my head, and yet you won't accept my help with your SPEW rubbish, you won't even look at me most days. Where do _you_ get off thinking you're better than me?"

Wildly, disjointedly, Hermione had time to bristle and think that it was S.P.E.W., not SPEW, before she realized how close he was standing to her. So close that their faces were almost touching. And suddenly, the staircase gave a great jolt and began to shift. Malfoy threw his arms out against the banister on either side of her with lightning quick seeker's reflexes, avoiding a collision with Hermione that would almost certainly have thrown her off the staircase. Unfortunately she was thrown forward instead so that she was pressed tightly against him, the details of her patented daydream charm painfully clear in her mind.

Once the staircase had settled they stood unmoving for one sordidly drawn-out moment, catching their breaths and trying to sort out a mess of tangled thoughts. Finally Hermione took a step away from Malfoy and began to climb back up to the staircase's new point of entry, unable to produce speech of any sort.

"Granger," Malfoy began, but she cut him off.

"As you clearly have a problem with me, Malfoy, I'll just find my way back to the class and you can do whatever you like, fall behind for all I care."

"Granger," he repeated, starting to climb up after her.

"Really, Malfoy, this bizarre sort of war between us is so infantile."

"Yes, but Granger—"

"And really," she added, still looking over her shoulder at him as she threw open the door at the top of the staircase, "as you're the only one of your house in your year you're the one in need of friends and I can only be expected to try so hard not to be completely infuriated by you."

"Granger, that's the third floor!" Malfoy shouted, but it was already too late. Cursing herself, Hermione turned around and saw that she was standing in an unoccupied teacher's study, with cobwebs hanging down from every wall and desk. She heard Malfoy swear loudly and dive into the room after her, just fast enough to slip by before the door shut behind him of its own accord. They looked at one another, for once without animosity, and saw their own expression reflected in the other's eyes.

"This is a problem," Hermione remarked, staring at the shimmering study door.

"Keenly deduced," Malfoy said acidly.

"Why did you follow me?"

"I didn't really want you ending up on the roof of Ravenclaw tower. If you fell the paperwork alone would be a nightmare."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Very funny. Shall we see where we end up?"

"After you," Malfoy said with a trace of a smile, and Hermione scoffed at him as she opened the door. The sight that greeted her on the other side made her eyes grow wide and her hands fly up to cover her mouth.

"What is this place?" Malfoy asked, stepping out onto the damp stone floor and looking up.

"This," Hermione replied, "is the Chamber of Secrets."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Every notice how when you save a new draft in the Doc Manager you get a message at the top of the page saying "Success!" As if you've just run a marathon or something... Ok anyway here's the deal (not that anyone's actually reading, but I have to get this story out of my head)- the next chapter is sort of the grand finale, and then there's one more chapter after that. But I'm going on vacation for an undetermined amount of time so the last few updates might take a while. If you want to contribute to speedier updates, clap your hands and say "I do believe in fairies, I do, I do." What? I don't know. This is a Peter Pan sort of day. Leave me reviews guys, I'd love to know what you think! Cheers...  
**

**CHAPTER FIVE – FLIGHT FROM THE DEEP**

_Dear dimwitted brother of mine,_

_I know what you're doing, you know, and it's ridiculous. Hermione's not the kind of girl who needs expensive necklaces, she just misses you, and if you don't know that about her then you're an even bigger prat than I thought. I think it's about time you came back to England. Harry misses you too. The other day I caught him playing chess against himself. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. The Hogsmead shop is rubbish since you left Verity in charge. I can't find a bag of dungbombs to save my life, and Filch is getting far too happy these days. And Fleur had a scare with the baby today, but it turned out all right, and Bill has been driving us all mad for weeks talking about the baby nonstop. It's your turn to share in the suffering._

_Seriously, Ron, enough is enough. Come home. Hermione won't wait for you forever. Neville's been making eyes at her... All right, that isn't true at all, but_ someone _is going to, and soon. You know I'm right._

_Much love,_

_Ginny._

_PS: Mum was furious you didn't come round for Christmas, of course, and she asked me to send you your present since she didn't think Errol would survive the trip. I've kept your chocolate and treacle tarts, but I'm passing along your sweater. Consider yourself lucky._

_PPS: I miss you too, you know. Give my love to George._

* * *

"The Chamber of... Granger, you're joking," Malfoy breathed.

"No, that's definitely where we are," Hermione confirmed. She spared a moment to admire the high-vaulted stone ceiling, the criss-crossing snake statues immaculately carved with emeralds in the place of their eyes, the colossal basilisk skeleton in the corner by the statue of Salazar Slytherin... Then she turned to the heavy steel door at the other end of the Chamber, and her heart leapt. She and Ron had left it open the last time they had been here, which left only one obstacle.

"We have to get out of here," she said, but Malfoy only stood rooted to the spot, gaping at the Chamber. "Come _on!_" When he still failed to move Hermione let out an impatient sigh and grabbed him by the hand, dragging him to the door. Something odd was happening inside her chest, as though a cold hand were slowly constricting her windpipe and twisting at her heart, and she felt a desperate need to leave at once. A few steps away from the door she faltered and fell to her knees.

"What is it?" asked Malfoy in alarm.

"This place must... must be warded against—muggleborns," Hermione forced out, clutching at her chest. "I have... to get out of here."

"How?"

Hermione pointed her wand at the crook of her throat and cast a nonverbal _sonorus_. Then, with great effort, she concentrated upon the sound Ron had made when he had led them down here months ago. Her first strangled hiss echoed up through the pipe that led to the castle, but she could tell by the lack of response that it did not work. Allowing herself a small gasp of pain as spots began to dance before her eyes, she tried again, to no avail.

"What's happening?" Malfoy was asking, but his voice was faint. She could barely see his face anymore. Mustering all her strength, Hermione tried one more time to copy Ron's strangled hiss. To her overwhelming relief, she heard a corresponding rumble far overhead and knew that the passageway into Moaning Myrtle's lavatory had been opened.

Hermione rolled onto her back, struggling to breathe, and tried to remember what she had meant to do next.

"Wake up! Hermione, wake up!"

Someone was calling her name. She opened her eyes for a moment and saw Malfoy kneeling over her, trying to shake her awake.

"Your broom," she gasped. "It's—in your dormitory?"

Malfoy nodded, apparently too bewildered to ask about her reasoning.

"Summon it," Hermione whispered.

"What? It's behind a locked door. I don't—"

"So it'll break down the door," Hermione tried to shout, frustrated beyond measure. The pain in her chest was increasing, clouding her ability to reason.

She closed her eyes once more and heard Malfoy shout "_Accio Nimbus_!"

The wait seemed interminable as Hermione lay panting, hoping desperately that Malfoy's spell would work. Vaguely she heard him whisper spells to attempt to revive her, shaking her and calling her name all the while. At last a whooshing sound was heard and she felt Malfoy lift her up and place her in front of him on a broomstick. The moment their feet left the ground and they soared out of the chamber into the pipe that would bring them back to the castle, the steel bands encircling Hermione's insides vanished, and she gasped as air came flooding back into her lungs.

"Granger?" Malfoy said tentatively. Had he called her Hermione, or had it been a hallucination?

"All better," Hermione told him.

"The wards must have been activated by You-Know-Who's death," he said. Seeing her inquiring look he elaborated, "It's part of the legend of the Chamber that isn't in the history books. My father told me once that if the heir of Slytherin was defeated those unworthy usurpers who tried to breach Salazar Slytherin's territory would be punished."

"Lovely," said Hermione darkly. "And Malfoy, really, you worked for him for years and you can't call him Voldemort? Or at least Riddle?"

She felt Malfoy grow tense behind her, and he did not answer, so Hermione concentrated on holding onto the broom for dear life. She supposed that flying was really not so bad, once you got over the fear of falling to your death. Malfoy's _Nimbus 2001_ was a spectacular broom, gliding through the air smoothly and soundlessly. Already Hermione could see a faint light ahead where the passageway opened up.

"Tell me something, Granger," Malfoy said after an uncomfortable pause. "Did you speak Parseltongue back there?"

"Yes," Hermione said, shrugging. "I'm not a Parselmouth or anything. I just know the one phrase. I learned from Ron, who learned from Harry."

"Unbelievable," Malfoy said, almost too low for Hermione to hear. The last of the curse against her had finally worn off, and she felt drained. Without thinking Hermione leaned her head back to rest against Malfoy's shoulder, relishing the sight of the passageway growing closer up ahead. Malfoy's weight shifted slightly, and after a moment Hermione became aware that his face was pressed against her temple. She could feel the stubble on his jaw move against her skin, not entirely unpleasant. He was leaning closer, and her heart was about to stop, and he was about to do something that would almost certainly haunt them both in the sober light of the world above.

Hermione pulled away abruptly, and at the same moment the broom soared through the passageway into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. She stepped shakily onto the ground at once and took a step back.

"Malfoy..." she began, for once in her life uncertain of what she really meant to say.

"It's Weasley?" Malfoy asked matter-of-factly.

"I—" Hermione swallowed the lump in her throat. "I don't know." Though her heart ached to see Ron again, she hated him in that moment for leaving her unable to come up with an answer.

"Pity," Malfoy said, and he seemed to be speaking mostly to himself. Hermione decided to take issue with it anyway.

"Don't," she snapped. "You don't know what you're talking about. You don't have a _clue_."

"That much is fairly obvious Granger," Malfoy replied calmly. All of the haughty contempt had returned to his voice, and Hermione was much sorrier to hear it than she would admit. "Given what just happened, I think it's safe to say that I am severely touched in the head. Never mind. People act dense when they're in life-threatening situations."

"Oh is that right?" Hermione began, her anger mounting. The rest of her speech, however, was drowned out by a mournful wailing which erupted from the nearest toilet.

"Draco?" said Moaning Myrtle, appearing in mid-air and glaring at them through her thick glasses.

"Oh," Malfoy said, completely diverted. "Yeah, hi."

"Why haven't you been to visit me, Draco?" Myrtle whined, drifting closer and passing through Hermione's shoulder. A sensation like being doused in icy water struck her, and she shivered. "And what is she doing here?"

(_"Why didn't you tell me you were getting out today? And why was _she_ with you?"_)

"I've just been busy. It's not like that, Myrtle," Malfoy muttered, looking thoroughly embarrassed.

"Oh? Well what is it like, then, hmm?" Myrtle demanded, growing louder and shriller with every word. "Because I will not be ignored! I was ignored when I was alive and I swore in death it wouldn't happen that way anymore."

"Yeah, _Draco_, don't ignore her," Hermione chimed in, unable to stop her anger from giving way to amusement at the look on Myrtle's face.

Myrtle rounded on her. "You think this is funny, do you?" She swooped into a cubicle and back, causing a tremendous splash which flooded half the bathroom floor. "Come to laugh at Miserable Myrtle? I won't take it, I won't. You may have had Potter and that freckly one wrapped around your little finger but you can't take Draco from me too!"

To Hermione's horror, she felt a fit of giggles fighting its way up through her throat, and even Malfoy looked faintly amused.

"Come on, we should go," he said, edging towards the door. A moment later both he and Hermione were running down the corridor at top speed, laughing uncontrollably as a torrent of water crashed down behind them.

They arrived in Transfiguration together, late, soaking wet and thoroughly disheveled, and parted ways to take their respective seats without looking at one another or speaking. Professor McGonagall looked at them in bewilderment, and for the first time in her teaching career did not comment on the lateness of a student.

* * *

_Hermione,_

_I'm sorry about the delay with this letter. Paris is a long ways away and I imagine your owl must have gotten tired. You know I'm no good with talking about my feelings and all that, Hermione, and I don't know if I can do it in a letter. I think we should talk face to face. The shop's going to be a madhouse over Easter, but I plan to come back in May and that's a promise. I won't stay a minute longer. There's something I need to tell you._

_Best,_

_Ron._

_PS: Pay Harry a visit, will you? I hear he's playing one-person chess these days._

* * *

"I'm afraid the matter has been thoroughly examined, Miss Granger, and no such Room of Requirement has been discovered," Professor McGonagall told Hermione when she hung back after Transfiguration the following day to ask about the teachers' progress with the Room.

"But—but I've seen it!" Hermione protested. "Many times. I almost died, Professor!" She had returned to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom a few hours after her escape to find that the entrance to the chamber had sealed itself automatically, leaving no evidence of her story. It was her word against the evidence.

McGonagall gave her a pained look. "Miss Granger, while I certainly believe your version of events, it is possible that perhaps the stress from last year—"

"For goodness' sake it's not the stress," Hermione burst out angrily. "The war is over, what is there to be stressed about? I'm talking about a real problem in this school going on _now_."

"We will take it under advisement, Miss Granger," McGonagall replied, but Hermione was not at all sure that she would. She was still fuming when she entered Charms class fifteen minutes later and Padma approached her, holding her unfinished homework and wearing a sheepish expression.

"I couldn't understand the part about variable thought patterns at all," Padma explained. "Do you think you could give me some pointers?"

"No problem," Hermione replied, taking the roll of parchment and beginning to make annotations here and there. She was beyond caring about this or that homework assignment and whether it was fairly completed. "How's Parvati these days?"

"She's doing really well," said Padma with a smile. "She got a job as a junior correspondent for the Daily Prophet, and she's just left for a trip to visit Lavender in France."

"What?" Hermione cried, dropping the parchment.

"Er, Lavender is in Paris at the moment on an assignment for the Muggle Liaison department," Padma clarified. "Parvati is visiting her. They're still friends."

"I can't believe this!" Hermione said, completely forgetting about Padma's assignment. "I just_ can't_ believe it!"

Did it really matter? She trusted Ron. Didn't she?

"Here," Hermione said, reaching into her bag and withdrawing a S.P.E.W. badge. She threw it to Malfoy, who had just sat down and was barely able to catch the badge before it could hit him across the nose. "Have one."

"Knew you'd come round sooner or later, Granger," Malfoy drawled. "So what was it we agreed on? Twenty galleons?"

"I told you, Malfoy, I don't want your blood money," Hermione said. "I want you to free your house elves. As a show of good faith."

"You want me to... You can't be serious!"

"Do you see me laughing?"

"Potter already freed our elf," Malfoy tried.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Don't insult my intelligence by suggesting I haven't done my research. I know every wealthy wizarding household in Britain keeps at least three elves around, if not more. That's my offer. Take it or leave it."

Malfoy considered her for a moment, grimacing. She could only imagine how he would manage to sell his family on her idea.

"Fine," he said at last, shaking his head. "You are the bane of my existence, Granger."

"Likewise," Hermione replied, grinning in spite of herself.

* * *

"You asked me to help rehabilitate this family's image, mother, and that's what I'm trying to do," Draco yelled through the fire at his mother.

"You couldn't just donate a little gold to this travesty of an organization, Draco?" Narcissa complained.

"Don't you think I tried that?"

"How am I supposed to manage this house without the elves? It's blackmail, that's what it is."

Draco sighed. They had been through this argument at least three times. "So just free two or three of them, mother. She doesn't know the exact number, she'll never tell the difference."

"We can't spare a single one!" Narcissa insisted, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the very idea.

Draco snorted. "Honestly, mother, do you really need an entire elf just to look after your hair?"

Narcissa pursed her lips and, grudgingly, said, "I'll free two, and that's all. Mitsy and Hob are getting old, in any case. Their work hasn't quite been up to par."

"Right." Relieved, Draco made to pull his head out of the fire, but something nagged at him, telling him that it wasn't enough. It sounded very much like Granger's voice. "Wait!" he called. "You can't just turn them out onto the street if they're old. Where will they go?"

"I hardly think that's my concern," Narcissa said.

"Look, if we're going to do this, we might as well do it right. House elves don't abide by Golpalott's laws, they don't need much to live on. Just give them ten galleons each or something. You've probably got more than that in your change purse right now."

"Good Lord, Draco, who ever heard of giving house elves severance pay?" Narcissa exclaimed. "The poor things would take it as an insult."

"I don't care how they take it," said Draco through gritted teeth, "as long as they take it."

"Very well, darling," Narcissa conceded. "Oh, and Draco, your father spoke to Pankhurst of the Department of Mysteries the other day. He told him all about your excellent potioneering skills. Pankhurts recommended that you look into joining the department after leaving Hogwarts. Your father put in a donation, just to be sure."

"Of course he did."

Draco pulled his head back into the Slytherin common room and brushed soot from his face. It was not as though he had not thought about what he wanted to do after he left Hogwarts. When he had been younger he had always thought that he would follow in his father's footsteps as a philanthropist. The older he got, however, the more he came to realize that this occupation repelled him. Still, being an Unspeakable had never crossed his mind.

He would be at the forefront of the most secretive and delicate wizarding operations. Secrets would be open to him which few others would ever come close to in all their lives. He would make mounds of gold, not that he needed it. He would never be able to share with anyone what he did with his life.

Well, who exactly was he planning on sharing his endeavors with, in any case?

Draco ascended the stairs to his dormitory with the vague intention of writing a letter to Pankhurst. He had just passed the door to the sixth years' dorm when he heard voices drifting up the staircase and recognized a name which made him stop in his tracks.

"... heard it from Zoe, who heard it from Moaning Myrtle," said the first voice, which belonged to Malcom Baddock. "Granger went snooping in the Chamber of Secrets, the bleeding idiot. To think that filth managed to get in there."

"The curse didn't get her?" asked the voice of Graham Pritchard. Both boys were drawing near, and Draco hurriedly cast a disillusionment charm on himself and hid behind a column for good measure.

"No, she was with some bloke, see, and he carried her out on a broomstick," Baddock explained. "Myrtle wouldn't say who. Probably some mudblood. Doesn't matter, though, the castle'll get her soon enough, won't it?"

"What are you on about?"

"Haven't you heard the stories?" Baddock asked, clearly pleased at the sense of superiority his knowledge afforded him. Both boys entered their dormitory and closed the door behind them. Draco pulled an extendable ear from his pocket and pressed it against the door, listening with all his might. If nothing else, the Weasleys were certainly good for providing means of breaking the rules.

"... father works in the department of mysteries," Baddock was saying. "He wasn't allowed to tell me all of it, obviously, but he let slip something about if it's true what they say, that You-Know-Who had all these horcruxes hidden in the castle and Harry Potter destroyed them, then all that malevolent energy will have been released into the school. And it'll seek revenge."

"So?" said Pritchard.

"So Granger was the one what helped Potter destroys the horcruxes, wasn't she? Potter's not here, so it'll seek revenge on _her_. And good riddance, I say."

Draco dropped the extendable ear and fled, his heart racing, his mind working furiously. As he ran he tore a piece of parchment from his pocket and scrawled a single line on it.

_Granger. Third floor corridor. Eight o'clock. _

* * *

_Voices echoed through an unknowable room, clanging and reverberating off the walls until they grew so intermingled that only a tormented whisper could be heard._

_Fiendfyre is one of the most powerful substances known to wizardkind... Both of my brothers have passed through the veil..._

_Ignotus Peverell's lost box was found... Your legacy will be intact..._

_Incendio horribilis..._

_The box would now be several centuries old... The power laying dormant in the box would be astronomical..._

_Deep in the heart of Hogwarts castle, fire had been ignited._


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: So this chapter is probably the closest I will ever come to writing something racy- not very bloody close, in other words. Sorry guys, from what I could tell from my brief forays into Dramione fic, copious amounts of smut seem to be a convention of the genre (not that there's anything wrong with that, don't get me wrong I don't mean to keep dumping on Dramione fics, some of them are actually excellent), but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm a YA writer in real life and it's just not in my arsenal, nor do I really have the means or inclination to learn; I keep picturing JK Rolwing standing behind me tearing her hair out when I try. But I did my best for you guys, I tried! Cheers...  
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**PS I don't know if I mentioned this but I realize the RoR was on the seventh floor in the books. I used the third floor in this fic as a clue to the fact that the room has migrated, and is unstable, since Hermione has a history with the third floor (Fluffy, and all that...) Sorry for any previous confusion, and for how long this author's note has gone on. Enjoy!  
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**CHAPTER SIX – BY THE LIGHT OF THE FIENDFYRE**

Hermione arrived at the third floor corridor at seven forty-five. By eight fifteen she began to grow impatient; at eight thirty she contemplated storming off in a huff. At eight fifty-seven she was still sitting on the floor with her back resting against the wall, so she saw Malfoy coming and had time to roll her eyes long before he spotted her.

"Second thoughts?" she guessed, standing to face him.

"I was thinking about what my life used to be like," he said. "Before it got mauled by a manticore and thrown off a cliff, basically. And I got to thinking that if I could just get rid of you in my life, I could probably get most of it back. So I took a walk and tried to decide if I should listen to my mother and father and family and friends' voices in my head screaming at me to stop being completely thick and put things back the way they were. It took a while."

"And?"

"I'm here," was all he said.

Hermione thumbed the note he had sent her. "So what is it you needed to tell me?"

"This idea of yours that the Room of Requirement has—has gone rogue, so to speak... Is it just based on your observations, or has anyone else had similar experiences as yours?"

"Just me," Hermione told him.

"Right," said Malfoy. "And I've been inside the Room alone without being transported around this year. In fact I've had a pretty normal go of it."

Comprehension began to dawn in her mind, and Hermione looked at him in horror. "You mean—"

"It's after you," he confirmed. "I heard some sixth years talking, and they thought that because you helped Potter get rid of those horcruxes, the energy that was released would turn on you. The Room's been going after you, and only you, all year."

"But if I wasn't here," Hermione continued, "next year, for example, then it would have to concentrate upon someone else, wouldn't it? Someone else who fought but wasn't as involved as I was? Dennis Creevey or Jimmy Peakes or... or Professors McGonagall or Bill?"

"That's likely," Malfoy agreed.

"Okay," Hermione said, steeling herself for what had to be done. "All right, fine. Good." And she turned to face the blank stretch of wall opposite her and Malfoy, her mind made up.

"So are we going to get McGonagall to come investigate with us or something?" Malfoy asked.

"No." Hermione had already closed her eyes and was envisioning the door. "If it's after me most of all, I can't let anyone else get involved. I have to take care of it myself."

She opened her eyes and there was the door, tall and daunting and shimmering before her eyes.

Malfoy kissed her.

It only lasted a second, but in that second Hermione felt her world teeter on the edge of some vast dark precipice, and she was struck with breathtaking vertigo. He remained expressionless when he pulled back, in no way acknowledging what had just happened, but Hermione took it to mean that he was coming with her. That this was his penance for the things that still echoed through her mind at night.

(_"You are lying, filthy mudblood."_

"_We found it—PLEASE!"_

"_Draco, move this scum outside."_

"_Surely this is the mudblood?"_

"_I... maybe... yeah."_)

"Off we go, then, Malfoy," said Hermione, moving to stand directly in front of the door. Harry and Ron's faces swam before her eyes, and she thought how dearly she wished they could be here with her on this latest adventure, as they had been for all the others. But they weren't here, and she would never be the one to put them in harm's way.

Malfoy scoffed and said, "I think we're past the whole Granger, Malfoy thing, yeah? Off we go, then, Hermione. Let's put ourselves in mortal danger." He grimaced. "I should be excommunicated from Slytherin just for saying that."

Laughing, Hermione opened the door, and with Draco following behind her, entered the Room of Requirement...

And found herself in a ghostly forest, surrounded by skeleton trees devoid of leaves or needles, devoid of life. The ground underfoot was cracked stone through which the trees' diseased roots had just enough room to squirm and fight for dominance. Droves of mist drifted through the branches, blown to and fro by eerily silent gusts of wind. Towering walls and an impossibly high ceiling were barely visible through the haze of the mist, and blackened moss grew in patches over the yellowing marble surfaces they presented.

"Are we in the forbidden forest?" asked Draco. "Some faraway part of it we've never seen?"

"No," Hermione replied, advancing through the trees with fear and awe. Every few yards she spotted some ancient relic covered in hundreds of years' worth of dust: A rosewood desk, a three-wheeled horseless carriage, a casket. "This is what the Hogwarts grounds would have looked like if the founders hadn't come upon them and made them great."

"Do you hear that?" Draco asked, cocking his head to the side.

She did. Hermione could hear a crackling noise and a familiar sort of hiss, impossibly faint, and it was a sound that cut right through every layer of cold reason she had down to some deep-seated, primal fear. She had heard that sound once before. And as she watched a soft, almost invisible orange glow mount the horizon by the far wall, she knew what it heralded.

The Room had conjured Fiendfyre. It was miles away, but it was coming for her.

* * *

"Harry, what are you doing here?" Ginny shrieked, throwing her arms around Harry and laughing.

"I had the night off, and McGonagall owled me," Harry explained, dropping his cloak by the Gryffindor fireplace. "Said there was something wrong with the Room of Requirement, and she was in over her head. I know, I was shocked too," he added, seeing the bemused look on Ginny's face.

"You know, Hermione's been obsessed with that Room all year," Ginny said pensively. "She told me to stay away from it altogether, and she spent weeks in the library reading up on it."

"What else is new?" Harry asked. "How is Hermione, by the way? I haven't heard much from her the last few weeks."

Ginny shook her head. "Hermione is Hermione. Brilliant as always. But Ron's really done a number on her. You know how he always craved all the glamour and the money that practically fell into your lap without you even asking for it. I know you didn't want it!" she said hastily, because Harry showed signs of outrage. "But it followed you everywhere you went anyway, and so did he, and even after the war, when he proved himself and all, I still don't think he felt up to it—being with Hermione, I mean. I told him this plan of his was mental, but he's got it into his head that he's got to make his own way. Hermione obviously doesn't understand, as he hasn't told her any of it. She sort of thinks he's ditched her."

"What a mess." Harry shook his head. "Is she in your dormitory? I'd love to see her."

"No, I haven't seen her tonight. That's odd, actually. Come to think of it she was distracted at dinner, kept looking at some bit of parchment in her hand and I had to ask her five times to pass the marmalade before she heard me."

Warning bells were going off in Harry's head. "You don't think—"

"She went to deal with the Room herself?" Ginny finished for him. "Now you mention it, yeah, I definitely do."

"Got any Floo?" Harry asked. Ginny raised an eyebrow, confused, and he said, "I'm going to run to Paris quickly and _drag _Ron back here, and then we're going to find Hermione and get to the bottom of this."

* * *

"I knew this was a bad idea," said Draco.

"Shut up, let me think," Hermione hissed. The door behind them had sealed itself, leaving only an indented imprint in the solid marble wall. The Room was making its final, deathly stand.

"Well think fast," Draco retorted, "because I don't really fancy being a ghost, do you?"

His words sparked something in Hermione's memory.

"A ghost... ghosts, ghosts in the corridor," she muttered, moving her hands through the air and picturing the landscape of Marauder's Map as she had viewed it in September, before the whole school went mad. "That's it! The ghosts!"

"What?"

"According to Agnes Ballicastle's seven spirit laws, the only three properties that can annihilate a ghost are basilisk venom, Fiendfyre, and pure love," Hermione explained.

"Pure love?" Draco spat with dreadful sarcasm. "What the hell has that got to do with anything?"

"It's the Fiendfyre that interests me," said Hermione. "The Grey Lady found out at the start of the year, somehow, that the room was malfunctioning. It must have been firing off Fiendfyre even then. She regretted choosing an existence as a ghost, so she used the power of the Room as an out, a way to find the veil. The veil being a sort of passageway between this world and death."

"I know," said Draco impatiently, and she thought with an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach that he must have grown up hearing tales of the veil just as she had grown up hearing stories about heaven.

"Let's find it," she said, taking his hand and setting off at a run straight in the direction of the Fiendfyre. The heat rolled over her in waves even at such a distance, and Hermione experienced a thrill she had not felt since the war, firing off jinxes at Death Eaters with Harry and Ron and expecting at any moment to die. It was almost as though the excitement of battle had become second-nature to her, a drug she craved when her life grew too dull. She knew then that it would take years for her to rebuild some semblance of normalcy in her life, _if _she made it out of the Room in one piece.

If Draco had reservations about running directly at a deadly wall of flame in search of a passageway to the land of the dead, he kept them to himself, for which Hermione was profoundly grateful. She scanned the horizon in search of the object which had the power to save her, desperate for even a glimpse. Surely it would appear to her, surely she had not done all this research for nothing, surely a haven would present itself—there! Hermione's entire body shivered in relief as she spotted the tall stone archway a few hundred yards ahead, with a tattered veil of palest violet fluttering beneath it under the influence of an invisible push and pull. Clutching at a stitch in her side, she pulled Draco all the way to the veil and gazed at it for a moment, her academic thirst overtaking her fear.

"Hang on," Draco protested, sounding alarmed. "What is that thing doing here? We're not going through it, are we?"

"It's here because the Room intends to kill me," Hermione said. "And we're not going to go _through_ it exactly. Just under it."

Draco's expression did not exactly express confidence, but he did not protest, so Hermione began to cast around for an object large enough to accomplish the next phase of her plan.

"Do you ever regret it?" Draco asked unexpectedly. "Meeting Potter and Weasley, I mean, and being their babysitter for seven years, and their homework proctor and their bodyguard? Considering everything that's happened to you because of it."

Hermione considered him for a moment.

"Never," she said.

She was not sure this was the answer he had wanted, but he gritted his teeth and said, "Let's get on with it, then."

Hermione's gaze finally fell on the thing she was looking for: a vast oak wardrobe some fifteen yards away, so old that it was sunken halfway into the ground. She summoned it with a wave of her wand, and it landed in front of her with a hollow _thunk_, its door falling conveniently open.

"You might ask me to help," Draco pointed out as she began to circle the wardrobe, tapping each of its wooden panels in turn and muttering incantations.

"I might," said Hermione, "but I'm afraid I don't have time to teach you how to do this properly."

"So I'm just along for the ride then?" Draco said bitterly.

Like she had been with Ron, Hermione thought? Or like he had been with her?

Draco strode over and gripped her arm, and Ron vanished from her mind in an instant. His hand was the only real thing in the world, and he was looking at her with frightful intensity.

"It might seem foolish to need confirmation," said Draco, "but please tell me you know what you're doing."

"I'm casting protective enchantments on this wardrobe to protect it from the Fiendfyre," said Hermione. "Defensive spells are stronger when they're engrained in a solid object rather than cast into thin air. The enchantments will protect us against the Fiendfyre."

"And you think your spells will hold up against all the power the Room has collected?"

"No," said Hermione in between spells, waving her wand arm furiously through the air as the heat from the flames grew stronger. "That's why we're going to place the wardrobe under the archway. The flames won't harm the veil, that would defeat the whole purpose of its being there. Hopefully we won't even be touched by the fire. But if any of it does attack us, it'll have my wards to contend with. And just so you know, you're not just along for the ride. Your presence helps."

Draco looked surprised. "How's that?"

"Because you fought with Riddle," Hermione replied without looking at him. "The Room recognizes you as my enemy, and it's actually fighting against itself, trying not to harm you. That buys me time. The flames would already have made it this far if you weren't here."

"How ironic," Draco said.

Hermione nodded, managing a small smile. She had finally finished casting her wards, and the wardrobe, like the door to the Room itself, was shimmering with magic. The Fiendfyre was so close that Hermione could almost feel the hair on her temples being scorched. She stood back to scan her handiwork, ensuring that every inch of the wardrobe was protected.

"What are you waiting for? Get in!" Draco shouted over the approaching roar of the flames.

"It has to be located under the archway."

"So banish it there!"

"If it's already under the archway we won't be able to enter it without passing through the veil," said Hermione with a calm she did not feel. "And banishing it while inside where we can't see where it would land would be too imprecise."

They looked at each other, the plan's final step laid out before them with painful clarity.

"Get in," said Hermione.

"Now's not the time to start being stupid," Draco yelled, shaking his head.

"There's no way of knowing that the veil would really harm me," Hermione went on inexorably, inching back from the door. "Since I'm alive, it probably wouldn't affect me at all. All I'll have to do is run through and jump into the wardrobe."

"Yeah, right," Malfoy scoffed. "Not bloody likely."

The flames were less than a hundred feet away.

"JUST GET IN!" Hermione shrieked.

Draco burst into motion. For a moment Hermione thought that he was obeying her, and she felt an odd mixture of satisfaction and terror. Then he picked her up, pinning her arms to her sides, and threw her into the wardrobe, slamming the door behind her. Hermione hit her head violently against a side panel and saw stars. By the time she had jumped to her feet the wardrobe was already flying through the air. She felt it land with a jolt, and her heart plummeted into her stomach. Where was Draco? Why wasn't he running in to join her? Why could she not hear him through the door?

He was dead.

Undoubtedly, unbelievably, impossibly, he must be dead.

Hermione bit her lip, tasting blood, and waited, and waited, and waited.

The door sprang open and Draco fell through it, panting.

"You are the worst Slytherin in the history of Hogwarts!" Hermione bellowed, slamming the door shut just as a solid wall of Fiendfyre came crashing down around the archway.

She could not be sure, but she thought she heard him cough a faint "thanks" as she pulled him away from the door, struggling to push past the fur cloaks that lined the cramped wardrobe. Hermione conjured a goblet, which she filled with water and handed to Draco, her hands shaking in the darkness. He drained it in one and slowly managed to stand up, his legs shaking every bit as much as hers.

There was nothing left to do but wait.

* * *

"Why in the name of Godric Gryffindor's saggy right buttock did you not bring your cloak, Harry?" Ginny complained.

"I didn't know I'd be going on some secret mission, did I?" Harry retorted. "Besides, it's not even past curfew, we're not out of bounds."

"But you're not a student. To Mrs. Norrish that makes you definitely out of bounds."

"Would you two give it a rest arguing?" Ron cut in, scowling at Harry and Ginny. "I'm tense enough as it is."

"This could all have been avoided if you hadn't made the choice to be such an enormous prat, Ron," Ginny said, rounding a corner and bounding down the fifth floor staircase.

"Enough," Harry scolded the both of them. "We're almost there."

His heart was racing, and he could tell by Ron's flushed expression that he felt the same way. The horrendous night at Malfoy Manor when Hermione had been tortured rang through the back of his mind, and he increased his pace. He could not imagine where he and Ron—and the entire wizarding world, for that matter—would be had Hermione not stuck by him all these years, and the thought of losing her now after everything they had been through was beyond mad.

"Students out of bounds, my pretty?" came Filch's voice suddenly from the end of the corridor, and Harry cursed under his breath. Filch's haggard face came into view in the torchlight, and his eyes widened, first in shock, then delight.

Harry reached for his wand, unwilling to be held up by Filch of all people, and his eyes settled on a scarlet envelope in the caretaker's hand. Stamped at the top of the envelope under the heading _Quickspell Magic Enhancement Course_ were the words _Certificate of Graduation_. Harry saw Filch's eyes take on a malevolent glow as Ron and Ginny, too, caught sight of the envelope, and his spirits sank.

"What to do with this lot, then, my pretty?" asked Filch.

* * *

"I can't believe you purposefully disregarded my instructions," Hermione said, glaring at Draco in the gloom of the wardrobe.

"Not like you're Head Girl, is it?" Draco replied, his voice still hoarse from inhaling smoke.

"Shut up," Hermione snapped. "I would have made Head Girl last year if I'd come back, no question."

"We're literally on the brink of death, and that's what you care about? A Head Girl's badge?"

"I've been told my priorities may be slightly out of order," Hermione said evasively.

"It suits you," Draco told her. In the dancing orange light that seeped through the wooden panels behind him the sunken angles of his cheeks and eyes were somehow erased, and he looked healthier than he had in years. Only his eyes betrayed the chasm of change the entire wizarding community had crossed a year ago.

A great wave of flames rocked the wardrobe and Hermione threw her arms behind her, bracing herself against the side of the structure so that she faced Draco in the cramped space their refuge afforded.

"It found us," she whispered. "I—I really thought it might work. That the Fiendfyre would pass us by."

"It was as good a plan as any," Draco said, shrugging. His casual demeanor did not fool her in the slightest: there was terror in his face, and something less easily definable. It looked almost like fury. Was he angry at her for leading him into a deathtrap?

"I don't really know why you came with me," said Hermione, "but I'm glad I'm not alone."

The wardrobe shook again, more violently this time.

"If this was Defense Against the Dark Arts I'd pass my NEWT's for sure," Hermione said wistfully, and that was when Malfoy crossed the space between them and took her face in his hands.

"I'm not going to die without doing this," he said, and kissed her.

He really kissed her, this time, and Hermione's mind went blank. The Fiendfyre did not matter, her failing wards did not matter, all that mattered was the way it felt to kiss him back. It was better than Felix Felicis. Even better than cracking the spine of a new book and inhaling the smell of new parchment and gazing at the millions of unexplored words laid out before your eyes. Hermione was both exhilarated and frightened by the fact that it had never been like this before, and she shifted closer to Draco's hands which twisted into her hair and cupped the small of her back. He kissed a line down her jaw to the crook of her neck and she gripped his collar frantically, unable to form a single coherent thought with his lips burning against her skin.

The Fiendfyre raged on outside, but trapped between the wall of the wardrobe and the weight of Draco's body Hermione's worries vanished, replaced by a desperate longing for the feeling she was experiencing never to stop. As his hands left her hair, sweeping over her, making her see bright lights, the madness in her own mind spread like Fiendfyre and she lost herself to oblivion.

* * *

"Hermione? Are you there? _Hermione!_"

Harry raced across the ravaged stone floor, tearing at blackened branches and blasting trees away with his wand. To his right Ron had gone practically out of his mind, screaming for Hermione at the top of his voice and falling over countless roots and fallen branches in his haste to search for her. Ginny was ashen faced and tense as she participated in the search.

Without consulting one another they separated to canvas a wider area, and Harry headed off in the direction of a ruined stone archway from which hung a dirty, singed purple veil. Underneath the archway sat a wardrobe so blackened it looked like a pile of charcoal, though the wooden panels made a valiant effort at hanging together.

"Harry?"

Harry's stomach performed a vertiginous somersault when he heard her voice. Scrambling over a tangle of charred branches, he climbed to the wardrobe and raised his wand, ready to cast off any wreckage which might stand in his way.

The door to the wardrobe fell open and Hermione climbed out, bleary-eyed and thoroughly disheveled but unhurt.

"Oh my God, Harry!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. "What are you _doing_ here?"

"Looking for you!" Harry said, feeling light-headed with relief. He stood back to examine Hermione, who appeared excessively on edge. She kept glancing back to the wardrobe, her brow furrowing nervously. "What are _you_ doing here? The place has been razed to ash, by the look of it. How are you alive?"

"I have so much to tell you," said Hermione, and Harry was glad to hear some of the old eagerness to instruct come back into her voice. "The Room of Requirement went berserk, Harry, it spent all year trying to kill me, only at first I wasn't sure... When I came in here today it sent Fiendfyre after me, and I barely had time to protect myself. The curse must have burned itself out, finally. There's nothing left now."

"I'm sorry it took us so long to get here," said Harry, aghast. "We may have had to duel Filch a little on our way." Hermione's eyes grew wide, and he grinned. "I've brought you a surprise, though. Hang on—RON!"

Harry heard a sharp intake of breath from Hermione as he spoke Ron's name, which he attributed to her surprise that Ron should be in England. He turned to face the left side of the room and cupped his hands around his mouth, calling after Ron again. When he turned back he thought he saw here shake her head in the direction of the wardrobe, but just then Ron arrived, bounding over piles of wreckage and looking positively giddy with relief.

"Ron—I—You—" Hermione stammered, looking at him with something like panic.

"We'll explain everything back in the common room, if Filch doesn't find us and murder us on the way back," said Harry, waving Ginny over. Hermione hesitated for a moment, then fell into step beside him, throwing one last look at the wardrobe.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Voila! All done. This wasn't a particularly fun chapter to write, a bit of a downer actually, but I'm happy with it. I hope it gives some sense of resolution. And all sort of canon-adjacent, you know... Thanks to everyone who reviewed! Cheers! **  
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**CHAPTER SEVEN – UNSPEAKABLES**

Professor McGonagall was not surprised in the slightest to discover that Harry, Hermione, and assorted members of the Weasley family had averted another catastrophe in her school. Glossing over the indignant accusations of one severely addled Argus Filch, she informed the lot of them that as they already had Orders of Merlin and special awards for services to the school, there was simply not much else to be done, and left them to recuperate together in the Gryffidor common room.

Hermione sat by the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa and chatted with Harry, Ron, and Ginny happily enough, though she avoided Ron's gaze as though he were a basilisk. But when Harry and Ginny exchanged a meaningful glance and made excuses to leave her alone with Ron an uncomfortable silence fell over the room, prying cruelly at her insides.

"I can't believe you went in there alone," Ron settled on at last.

"I didn't really think I could rely on you, Ron," Hermione told him delicately, and the wounded look on his face caused her only a slight pang of guilt.

"Harry then," he replied. "Or Ginny. But you can always rely on me, Hermione."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah, it is. That's why I've been working my arse off up in France all year, isn't it? For us."

Hermione kept her silence but threw him a slightly skeptical look.

"What else did you think I'd be doing?" he asked, sounding poised to become angry, which Hermione thought was thoroughly out of order.

"Cozying up with Lavender Brown, maybe," she retorted in a biting tone, wondering what had gotten into her.

Ron's face fell and Hermione felt a terrible coldness spread through her. So it was true, then. "That's not—She—It's not what you think, Hermione. You've completely got the wrong end of this."

"What is it, then?"

"She was... helping me with something," he said, and she scoffed. "No, really! I never lied to you Hermione. I really have been busy as all hell this year, pulling triple shifts at the shop every day. I even got a second job in this pub down the street from the shop, and that's where I ran into Lavender. She's changed, you know. Greyback's attack, it made her mature a bit. She was really happy for me when I told her, well—She was helping me... pick something out."

Hermione felt as though her stomach had fallen out of her body as a gnawing suspicion began to worm its way into her head. Squashing it, she said, "So this was all about gold, then?"

"You know I've always felt sort of—sort of like a knut in a pot of galleons next to you and Harry," Ron said in a pained voice. "It always ends up seeming like the two of you are on some separate wavelength miles ahead of me, and I'm just struggling to keep up. And it was the same way at home with all my brothers. I wanted to make something of myself. And I did. I—I bought a house. I wanted it to be a surprise when I came back, but it's this little place in London. It has a library, Hermione."

He had bought a _house?_ For _them?_ Hermione felt her control begin to spiral away.

"When you left in the forest last year," she began cautiously, "you didn't just leave Harry, Ron. You left me too. And I didn't think you ever would again, but this year you left at the first chance! And I wasn't sure you'd ever come back."

"I'm sorry I left," he said flatly, surprising her. "But I never _really_ walked away from you, Hermione." He pulled something out of his pocket, and Hermione recognized the deluminator. "I lighted this almost every day while I was in Paris and listened to you. Just your voice, talking to Neville or Ginny or even Draco Malfoy, always with a kind thing to say. It made me—" he took a deep breath, "it made me love you even more."

Hermione gaped at him, panicking. "Were you listening to it today? Is that how you found me?"

"No, Harry showed up in Paris today to take me here, I didn't have time to use it." He shook his head. "Hermione, if I'd known this was what you thought of what I was doing... It really wasn't meant to go this way. Everything I did, it was all for you."

She looked into his earnest, pleading eyes, feeling sad. He had finally said it: the word that erased all those letters signed _Best._ But he still didn't understand her at all. He had spent all year working towards the ultimate goal of impressing her, never taking the time to realize how little she cared about gold or jewellery or houses in London. Then again, she told herself, she had misunderstood him too. She had immediately been ready to believe that he had ditched her for Lavender, instead of remembering how much his family's lack of wealth and prestige had always affected him. Money and power, the two things she cared least about in the world. Two things which held an uncommon allure for the men she cared for.

Not Harry, she reminded herself. But she had never cared about Harry in the same way she did Ron and Draco.

_What are you doing?_ She screamed at herself. She could not rid herself of the image of the wardrobe, and the fire, and Draco... And now Ron was looking at her, waiting for her to speak, all that Weasley warmth she had grown up loving emanating from his eyes, and she did not know what to do.

"What was it Lavender was helping you pick out?" Hermione finally asked, taking the plunge.

Ron reached into his pocket again and produced a small velvet box. "It was all supposed to be a surprise. I was going to take you to bloody Madame Puddifoot's and all that, and give it to you. But here we are."

The impressive diamond ring gleamed at Hermione when Ron opened the box, his ears turning an adorable shade of red. She did not know what to say; did not know, in fact, whether she would ever be able to speak again.

"We've had some ups and downs," Ron went on quickly, "and I understand if you don't want to answer now. I made you wait a year, now I can wait. Just... think about it."

"I will," said Hermione, placing a kiss on his forehead and climbing the steps to her dormitory without another word.

* * *

The thrill of the chase was responsible for most of the activities in life that could be considered enjoyable, Draco reflected that night, after having left the silent, empty Room of Requirement alone and returned to his dormitory. That was why Hermione had intrigued him. Now that he had caught her, he could put all that behind him and go back to some semblance of his real life.

It did not even sound true in his head. Hermione could not be contained in a neat little box labeled _past_. She was everywhere.

_Granger!_ He told himself sternly. _Not Hermione._

He had wealth, connections, pure blood. The world could be whatever he made it. She had nothing. Except for brains the size of the black lake, an unfailing supply of compassion, and that way she arched her back...

He would put it out of his mind, once and for all. The icy feeling in the pit of his stomach when she had left the wardrobe with Potter and Weasley had been bad enough. Malfoys did not sulk.

He did not look at Hermione, speak to her, or allow his mind to wander to her at night for an entire week, though his dreams could not be helped. When he got her note, however, his resolve crumbled to dust in an instant.

_Malfoy. Third floor corridor. Seven o'clock._

He was there at six thirty, and she arrived at seven on the nose, her face impassive, serene. It was Easter break and the castle, mercifully, was utterly deserted. He strode right up to her and reached out to pull her face to his.

"No." She leaned back, turning away. His insides froze into a block of solid ice.

She had slapped him across the face in third year, bold and unapologetic. Thinking back to that moment now, it seemed mildly amusing. This, on the other hand, felt infinitely worse. This reminded him of what Azkaban had been like.

"Yeah, all right," he drawled, dropping his hand casually to his side and leaning back against the wall. "So what's the news, Granger?"

"Here," she said, holding out her hand and opening her palm to reveal the silver sickle he had contributed to her house elf collection tin. "You can keep this. Hire your elves back, if you like. I have no right to keep it."

"Didn't really free them to begin with, did I?" he lied, smirking. "Just keeping up appearances. Besides, parting with two of fourteen gremlins is hardly a wrench."

Hurt flickered in her eyes for a moment, but she hid it well.

"All the more reason," she insisted, shoving the sickle at him.

"Anything else?" Draco asked coldly.

"You're a remarkable wizard," Hermione told him. "Don't lose that."

"You can stop moralizing, Granger," Draco replied, raising one eyebrow in perfect cynicism. It was already easier. He was used to this. "You got what you wanted, yeah? Took a walk on the wild side. Can't say it wasn't entertaining. You can go back to doing Weasley's homework for him now."

She looked at him, stricken, and said nothing.

"Take care, Granger," Draco said. Then he walked away.

* * *

_To Mr. Marcus Pankhurst  
Department of Mysteries,_

_My name is Draco Malfoy, a NEWT student at Hogwarts School. I was honored to hear from my father recently that you had recommended my looking into a job as an Unspeakable. I must admit the offer intrigued me, and I would be delighted to be considered for such a post. I would be most obliged to you if I could arrange a visit of the Ministry following the completion of my NEWT exams._

_Regards,_

_Draco Malfoy_

_PS: My father always spoke most highly of you._

* * *

Victoire Delacour Weasley was born on the second of May of that year at Saint Mungo's hospital, on the anniversary of the battle at Hogwarts, and of the death of Lord Voldemort. The event coincided with Luna Lovegood's surprise announcement that she and Rolf Scammander had eloped, leaving the entire Weasley clan in high and slightly rowdy spirits. Hermione arrived in the waiting room and walked directly over to Ron, taking a seat by his side. She had not spoken to him since the day he had showed her the ring, and though he had written her weekly letters since then, he had not pressured her to spend any time with him.

"Yes," she said without preamble.

Ron looked at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then his eyes brightened.

"Really?" he exclaimed, taking her hand at once.

"Yes, but Ron," she went on, "do you want me to tell you what happened this year while you were away? I can tell you all of it, my whole year."

Ron shook his head, surprising her. "I left, Hermione, and that's on me. I don't care if Neville was making eyes at you, or Zacharias Smith, for all I know, or... or Draco bloody Malfoy." He let out a hearty laugh. "All that matters is what we do from now on."

Hermione experienced a moment of unsettling clarity when she heard Ron's laughter, and she realized that he had brought up Draco Malfoy as the least likely person in the world to look at her twice. The different sections of her life which had coalesced for such a brief period this year would never meet again.

A month later Hermione graduated from Hogwarts with nine Outstanding NEWT's and the Barnabus Finkley Award for Exceptional Spellcasting, and joined the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. On her first day she heard from a superior that Draco Malfoy had vanished without a trace.

"Figure he might have joined up with some of his old Death Eater pals in hiding?" her boss asked with an unpleasant smirk. "You went to school with him, didn't you?"

"I did," she confirmed, a little shortly. "And I've really no idea where he might be."

She and Ron were married the following year in a quaint but well-attended ceremony at the Burrow. Floating candles and dancing cake toppers were kept to a minimum in deference to Hermione's muggle relatives, though she did think she heard Auntie Muriel discussing flying Axminsters with her disgruntled cousin. Hagrid and Mrs Weasley engaged in a contest over who could cry the loudest, and Harry, as the best man, delivered a rather disjointed speech highly reminiscent of Dumbledore's finest. Ginny, who had just come from a training session with the Holyhead Harpies, arrived at the reception still holding a fluttering golden snitch tightly in her hand. Hermione was happier than she had ever dreamed she could be, and by all accounts it was a perfect day, except when the time came to open their wedding gifts. She could not explain to Ron why she burst into tears when she opened a basket of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes products from George and saw a patented daydream charm, so she claimed that they were tears of joy, which was hardly a lie.

* * *

Rumors about Draco Malfoy's return began to fly the moment he set foot in the Ministry after a year-long disappearance. He ignored them all, making his way down to the Department of Mysteries, where he was greeted by an embarrassingly gracious Pankhurts. Draco could only assume that his father's donation had been on the generous side.

As he passed rows of cubicles during his tour of the premises he heard countless explanations as to the cause of his absence, ranging from a failed plot to bring the Dark Lord back from the dead to a secret affair with a foreign beauty.

_Not foreign,_ he thought, giving the gossiping masses a look of disdain as he walked by.

The final stage of the tour was an overview of the Department of Mysteries for Unspeakable trainees. Draco was joined by a beautiful young woman named Astoria Greengrass, who Draco vaguely remembered from his Hogwarts days, and a middle-aged man called Alan Chiswick.

"We have a number of projects available for trainees," Pankhurst explained, leading them through a dark corridor into a circular room lined with doors. "The first deals with flesh-eating bowtruckles, and the second with house-elves. We are investigating the properties in elves which render them exempt from Golpalott's Laws of Elemental Magic. Now, I realize that working alongside elves is not a prestigious occupation, however we believe that the results may be well worth it. A new employee up in Magical Creatures has expressed particular interest in house elves, and you may have the chance to work alongside members of that department. Miss Greengrass, you will be assigned to the elves. Malfoy, as discussed with your father, I have arranged for you to work on the bowtruckle case. It is an exciting opportunity and a big job, so you will have an assistant available to you. Chiswick, you will report to Malfoy—"

"No."

Pankhurst looked flustered at the interruption. "Pardon me, Malfoy?"

"I'd like to work with the elves," Draco said clearly. "Give Miss Greengrass the top job and the assistant."

Astoria Greengrass looked shocked and quite pleased, and Pankhurst frowned.

"Your father—" he began.

"I don't really care what my father said, do I?" Draco interrupted. "He made the donation, and now I want the elf job. Is that a problem?"

"I suppose not," Pankhurst conceded. "Very well. Malfoy will head the house elf division."

* * *

In her third years at Hogwarts Hermione had first discovered the startling levity that could be achieved by keeping a secret. Walking through the halls of Hogwarts armed with a time-turner, she had felt special, set-apart from the masses, and the fact that she could not tell a soul had only increased her excitement.

When Hermione walked into her office one balmy day at the end of summer to find Draco Malfoy waiting by her desk she felt the thrill she had not experienced since the days of her time-turner return.

"Can I help you?" she asked cautiously.

"Granger," said Draco without a trace of emotion in his voice. "I'm here to drop off some files on house elf psychology from our department."

He placed a stack of parchment slowly onto her desk, looking directly at her all the while. Hermione reminded herself to breathe.

"You couldn't have magicked it into my in-tray?" Hermione asked.

"Yes," he told her. "I could have."

"You were gone," she called as he turned to leave. "Everyone said you'd vanished."

"The first stage of Unspeakable training consists of cutting off all contact with everyone in your life for a year," Draco said without turning back to look at her. "They have to know you can live in secrecy, as it's rather an important part of the job."

Secrecy, Hermione knew, when well measured, could be just the thing to keep one sane when life threatened to drift into the mundane.

She passed Draco regularly in the hallways at work from then on, occasionally stopping to talk, sometimes only exchanging a glance, and though they never shared anything more than polite conversation, and she felt absolutely no compulsion to seek out something apart from the happiness she shared with Ron, she looked forward to their encounters days ahead of time.

Draco Malfoy married Astoria Greengrass five months later in a private ceremony at Malfoy Manor. The day before the wedding he visited Hermione in her office again, his demeanor much more relaxed than it had been the first time she had found him there.

"Morning," said Hermione lightly, sitting back in her chair and gazing up at him. "I hear congratulations are about to be in order. Fast work, Malfoy."

He ignored her and held out his hand, dropping something onto her desk: a silver sickle. Hermione stared at it, wide-eyed, for so long that Draco raised an eyebrow, clearly concerned for her sanity.

"We don't have badges anymore," Hermione said at last. "But you can come to the benefit next month."

"I'd rather not," Draco said. "But I can contribute the support of fourteen elves. They may not be happy about it, but I can order them to show support for elf freedom against their will, if it comes to that."

Hermione fought against an exasperated chuckle and lost the fight, shaking her head with mirth. "Unbelievable," she said.

"Take care, Granger," Draco replied, and walked away.

* * *

_Rose Granger Weasley sat primly on the edge of her seat in a vacant compartment of the Hogwarts express, gesturing to Albus to join her. She waved at her mother and father until the train picked up speed and raced away, belching enormous clouds of white steam over the countryside._

_She pulled open the small cage resting by her trunk, allowing her tabby cat Minerva to jump onto her lap, where it rested, purring, as she stroked its head. Her bushy red hair was beginning to encroach on her vision and she pushed it behind her ears in a movement so common it bordered on the nervous tick. _

"_I can't wait to finally start," Rose breathed, her nerves tingling in excitement. "Just think, in a few hours we'll actually be at Hogwarts!"_

"_D'you think mum and dad might come visit some time?" Albus asked._

_Rose rolled her eyes. "How do you expect them to do that? It's a seven hour train ride. I think they've got other things to do."_

"_They could apparate," Albus suggested, shrugging._

"_How many times do I have to tell you, you can't apparate on Hogwarts grounds!"_

"_What do you think the sorting will be like?" Albus asked her apprehensively, changing the subject as he felt an argument brewing. He had spoken of nothing else for the last six months at least._

"_Honestly, Al, it will be fine," Rose said with perfect confidence. "You need to stop fretting. We're going into Gryffindor together and that's a promise."_

"_Gryffindor?" a snide voice repeated, and a group of snickering boys appeared outside their compartment. Rose recognized the boy her father had identified as Scorpius Malfoy among them, trailing behind the one who had spoken, a tall boy with short, brush-like hair and a thickset jaw. "Merlin, who'd want to be in Gryffindor?"_

_Albus gave an indignant splutter, but Rose faced the boy calmly and said, "Only every single one of the greatest wizards of this age. "_

"_I guess if you'd rather be an insufferable swot than someone with an actual brain," Malfoy drawled, smirking at her, and a few of the other boys jeered._

"_C'mon, Malfoy," the other boy added, "let's find a compartment that doesn't have the children of mudbloods in it."_

_Rose felt her blood boil and Albus stood up, reaching for his wand, but the boys had already departed. As they walked away Rose could have sworn she saw Malfoy scowl at the thickset boy and say, "Don't use that word, Flint." He looked over his shoulder before disappearing from sight, and Rose looked back, her lips curling in spite of themselves into a small smile._


End file.
